Hackers KO Malta's Bank of Valletta in attempt to nick €13m

Malta's Bank of Valetta (BOV) has pulled the plug on its entire internet access, including shutting down cashpoints and branch offices, after detecting a "cyber intrusion" by crims that tried to steal nearly €13m. The Times of Malta reported: "All of the bank's functions – branches, ATMs, mobile banking and even email services …

[Jay Lenovo]

Dust-off old Tools

BOV customers request for the meantime...

"Will you accept a check?"

[Carlsen]

Re: Dust-off old Tools

Paper cheques are regularly used in Malta. Some Maltese supermarkets use large red signs to inform customers they don't accept "personal cheques".

[MiguelC]

"Two days ago the Bank of Valletta celebrated Safer Internet Day, according to a press release"

Well, one might say that off the Internet is safer than connected to it....

[lglethal]

Bank of Valletta celebrated Safer Internet Day

Two days ago the Bank of Valletta celebrated Safer Internet Day

The phrase "waving a red rag at a Bull" comes to mind...

[MaltaMaggot]

Re: Bank of Valletta celebrated Safer Internet Day

The phrase "Inxejjer bandiera hamra lejn barri" comes to mind..

[adam payne]

Two days ago the Bank of Valletta celebrated Safer Internet Day,

By pulling the plug on everything. Well that's one way of being safer.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what you get when you manage your own DNS..

From what I've picked up, the BOV manages its own DNS, and it appears they may not have proper network segmentation in place so when they had to shut down access, the public site went with it. I'm guessing someone may re-architect things slightly afterwards.

Be that as it may, I am impressed that they failed transactions via reconciliation errors in 30 minutes and started reversing them. I've known banks that would not have spotted this in 30 days, so I don't think they're coming out of this too badly. Sure, some optics need tweaking, but it could have been much worse - someone has just had their security budget justified :).