Hackers stole over $87 million from Russia in just one year

Over 5.5 billion rubles (approximately $87 million) were stolen from Russia in cyber attacks from July 2015 to June 2016, reported newspaper RBK on Wednesday, citing data from Group-IB, a group of companies involved in preventing and investigating cyber crimes.

Compared with the same period in 2014-2015, the total amount of stolen funds has increased by 38 percent.

Almost half of the funds, according to Group-IB, were stolen in cyber attacks on banks. In 2014-2015, the hackers' primary targets were legal entities, namely the clients of financial institutions rather than banks themselves.

Group-IB recorded a sharp increase in hacker attacks exploiting the vulnerabilities of the Android operating system. The amount of theft in this segment increased by over 450 percent compared with the 2014-2015 period.

One of the largest cyber attacks that occurred in recent months in the Russian market was the theft of funds from Metallinvestbank. It became known in March 2016 that hackers withdrew more than 677 million rubles (approximately $10.7 million) from the bank's accounts. Part of the stolen funds was returned to the bank, but its representatives claim that its final losses have amounted to about 200 million rubles (approximately $3.2 million).