Andrei Ostroukh reports
Hackers broke into accounts at the Russian central bank earlier this year by faking a client’s credentials and attempted to steal $45 million, the bank said in a report released on Friday.
The bank said it managed to recover some of that amount—$26 million—but it did not say if that meant the rest had been stolen.
It did not identify the hackers. It said they broke into a system the central bank operates and that gives its clients access to correspondent accounts opened within the bank.
Read more on LiveMint.
In related news, Ivana Kottasova reports:
Russia said it has foiled a plot by foreign spies to hack the country’s banks just days before the attack was supposed to happen.
The Russian Federal Security Service, the FSB, said in a statement Friday that the cyberattack by “foreign intelligence services” was scheduled for Dec.5 and designed to destabilize Russia’s financial system.
The FSB didn’t say which country it thought was behind the plan. It said the hackers were planning to use servers owned by a Ukrainian company called BlazingFast and located in the Netherlands.
Read more on CNN.
Update: See TASS’s coverage with the Bank of Russia’s refutation of CNN’s claims.