Russian-speaking hacker group silence stole 272 million rubles from banks in three years

Russian-speaking hacker group Silence has damaged financial institutions around the world, including Russia, in the amount of $4.2 million over the past three years. This is stated in the report of the international company Group-IB, specialising in the prevention of cyberattacks.

According to Group-IB, for three years (from June 2016 to June 2019), Silence attacked financial institutions in more than 30 countries in Europe and Asia, including Russian banks. As a result, the hacker group was stolen at least 272 million rubles.

As Group-IB noted, the company's specialists continuously monitor the activity of Silence since 2016. As a result, Group-IB discovered that in 2019 the geography of Silence attacks became the largest ever.

Recall that hacker groups Silence and Cobalt performed a large-scale attack on Russian banks in late 2018, they managed to steal $ 20 million.

In addition, in January this year, the hacker group Silence made about 80 thousand malicious mailings to employees of Russian Banks, credit and financial institutions and payment systems. Hackers started sending phishing emails on behalf of "Forum iFin-2019" with an attached ZIP archive, inside of which there is an invitation to the banking forum, as well as a malicious attachment Silence.Downloader aka TrueBot.

On February 7 a hacker attack was committed on the IT Bank of the Russian city Omsk. Hacker group Silence stole 25 million rubles.

During 2018, the General Directorate of protection and information security at the Bank of Russia (FinCERT) repeatedly recorded targeted attacks on credit and financial institutions, which were committed by two major criminal groups - Cobalt and Silence.

For example, cybercriminals performed a large-scale attack on Russian banks in late 2018, they managed to steal $ 20 million. The scammers on behalf of the FinCERT division of the Central Bank sent out malicious documents with macros. In addition, a compromised account of an employee of the company Alfacapital was used.

It is interesting to note that, according to Group-IB, the attackers have now come up with another method for more successful attacks in the future.

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