Indian co-operative Cosmos Bank has fallen victim to a sophisticated malware and ATM cash-out attack that saw 94.24 crore ($13.4 million) stolen in 14,000 transactions across 29 countries.
The attackers infiltrated the bank's ATM switch system, passing and approving transactions from cloned Visa and Rupay debit cards through a proxy switch.
Milind Kale, chairman Cosmos Co-Operative Bank says: "We suspect the malware attack to be done from Canada. The money was withdrawn from ATM machines from 28 countries through around 12,000 international transactions and around 2,849 domestic transactions. The transactions were carried out using fake debit cards. The deposit of account holders is safe and intact. However, as a precautionary measure, we have stopped the online system for two days."
News of the incident comes just days after the FBI sent out an alert to banks, warning that cybercrooks were planning an 'unlimited' global ATM cash-out operation.
The alert states: "Historic compromises have included small-to-medium size financial institutions, likely due to less robust implementation of cyber security controls, budgets, or third-party vendor vulnerabilities."