Hack Costs Russian Central Bank $31M

In one of the latest salvos of cybertheft — this time not by Russians but against Russians — hackers have made off with roughly $31 million from correspondent accounts housed at the Russian central bank, NBC News reported.

The site said that this represents one of the more recent examples of “an escalation of cyberattacks on financial institutions around the globe.”

In a briefing conducted by Artyom Sychyov, a central bank official, it was stated the hackers attempted to make off with even more money. They gained access to the accounts by faking credentials, said the official. As noted by NBC, a separate disclosure by Russian officials last week showed that the government found out about activities by foreign spy agencies “to sow chaos” in Russia’s banking system through wave-like cyberattacks and social media reports planted with false reports of banks facing serious financial difficulties.