Rs 95 crore stolen by unidentified hackers from Cosmos bank

In what could be one of the biggest cyber attacks in Pune, nearly Rs 95 crore has been transferred by unidentified hackers from Cosmos cooperative bank into foreign-based bank accounts. According to police, the hackers used malware to hack the bank system and transferred the amount with over 12,000 transactions in the span of three days.

The bank officials have claimed that the account holders need not panic as the money has not been withdrawn from any of the bank accounts.

Suhas Gokhale, managing director of the bank told DNA, “We want to assure to all our bank account holders that their money is absolutely safe. Due to the firewall protection, the hackers could not penetrate any of the bank accounts. The money which has been transferred is mostly from the inter-bank settlement accounts. Our internal audit is on to find out the final figure for the amount.”

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The fraud came to light on Monday after which a case was registered with the Chatuhshrungi police station. According to police officials of the cyber cell of Pune police, the hackers cloned the cards of the bank account holders and syphoned off the money.

The police officer said, “The hackers used the malware to hack the system and to clone the card details of the bank’s customers to transferred the amount. On August 11, the hackers cloned the debit cards details and performed 12,000 transactions to transfer Rs 78 crore out of India. On the same day, total 2,849 transactions were performed within the country in which Rs 2.5 crore was transferred.”

“Later on August 13, the hacker managed to transfer Rs 13.92 crore in Hong Kong-based bank by initiating a swift transaction. Later in the day, when the bank officials found about the cyber fraud, the case was registered,” the officer said.

The police have registered a case under section 43, 65, 66(C) and 66 (D) of the Information Technology Act and relevant sections of Indian Penal Code. The team of cyber cell of the Pune police is investigating the case.