‘Moneytaker’ group stole millions from US, world banks: report

A newly detailed hacker group stole millions of dollars since May 2016 through international heists, including $8 million from 16 United States banks, according to a report released Monday by security firm Group IB. 

Group IB nicknamed the hackers “Moneytaker” after the name of the malware used in certain attacks. 

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The Moneytaker group, according to the report, has picked mostly smaller, community banks as U.S. victims, stealing money by infiltrating the credit card processor. 

It cleared money from the U.S. banks by organizing fraudulent credit card transactions.

Group IB linked the 16 U.S. bank victims to two hacked Russian banks and a hacked United Kingdom software company by the use of the same hacking infrastructure and software tools. 

The Moneytaker malware was used in both Russian attacks. 

Though the connection is not well established in the report, Group IB believes the same attackers also struck an additional Russian bank where the Moneytaker malware was not used. 

The group stole money from one of the firmly established Russian victims and the other bank using a Russian interbank money transferring system known as AWS CBR. The AWS CBR victims suffered around $2.5 million in damages, though the report notes that some of that money was recovered.