Hackers carry out the year's first attack on a Russian bank, stealing almost a million dollars

Hackers stole more than 58 million rubles ($918,140) from Pir Bank, according the newspaper Kommersant, which calls the incident the first cyber-attack on a Russian bank in 2018. Sberbank CEO German Gref has attributed the theft to the advanced persistent threat “Carbanak.” Pir Bank is Russia’s 329th biggest bank.

The hackers reportedly stole the money through the Russian Central Bank’s Automated Workstation Client (an interbank fund transfer system similar to SWIFT), moving the stolen funds onto debit cards at 22 of Russia’s largest banks, before cashing out at different locations across the country.

Russia’s Central Bank previously claimed that there would be no future hacker attacks on its Automated Workstation Client system. These incidents first started occurring widely in 2016, when hackers mounted nine successful attacks, stealing an estimated 1.5 billion rubles ($23.8 million). A year later, there were 11 successful attacks, stealing 1.2 billion rubles ($19 million).