A court in Pune district of Maharashtra has convicted 11 people in the Cosmos Bank cyber fraud case, where hackers siphoned off over ₹ 94 crore through a malware attack over two days in August 2018. The judicial magistrate (first class) sentenced nine of the accused to four years’ imprisonment and two others to three years and imposed a fine on them. The accused were convicted of charges under relevant provisions of the Indian Penal Code and the Information Technology Act. The hackers stole information of Cosmos Bank’s VISA and RuPay card customers through a malware, attacked the SWIFT system, and siphoned off over ₹ 94 crore on August 11 and 13, 2018. The hackers had attacked the bank’s ATM switch server and withdrawn ₹ 78 crore from various ATMs in 28 countries and another ₹ 2.5 crore was taken out within India. In another attack on August 13, the hackers fraudulently transferred ₹ 13.92 crore to a Hong Kong-based bank using the proxy SWIFT system, out of which the police managed to recover ₹ 5.72 crore.
As per the case details, hackers stole information of rhe Cosmos Bank’s VISA and RuPay card customers through a malware, attacked the SWIFT system (a vast messaging network banks used by financial institutions) and siphoned off more than ₹ 94 crore on August 11 and 13, 2018.
The hackers used a malware to steal the information of Cosmos Bank’s VISA and RuPay card customers, and then attacked the SWIFT system, which is a messaging network used by banks and financial institutions worldwide. Through this attack, they managed to siphon off more than ₹ 94 crore in a period of two days in August 2018.
