Hackers try to steal £229 million from Japanes bank in London

23 January 2009

An international gang of computer hacker's, hatched a daring plan to steal £229 million from some of the world's largest companies by hacking into the computers of a Japanese bank in London to wire transfer the money overseas but failed as they forgot to fill in a crucial field in the money transfer form.

In September 2004, security guard, Kevin O'Donoghue let in late in the night, Belgian hackers Jan Van Osselaer, and Gilles Poelvoorde, to the London branch of Japanese bank Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation on the pretext that they were friends and had come to play poker, when asked by other security guards.

The security guard had tried to remove the evidence of the visits of the hackers in the bank by trying to erase snippets of recordings from the bank's closed-circuit television system, but he failed to remove all the snips, later recovered by the police.

The hackers then installed key-logging software on many of the bank's computer systems, which recorded the usernames and passwords of bank employees by taking screenshots of usernames and passwords.

Several days later Jan Van and Gilles came again to collect the screenshots stored in the computers, which contained usernames and passwords that bank employees had keyed in over the past several days.

Armed with user names and passwords, the hackers came again to the bank on 1 October 2004, a Saturday and between 11.30 pm and 4.30 am, and tried 10 times to transfer money to accomplices in Spain, Dubai, Hong Kong and Singapore from accounts belonging to Toshiba International, Nomura Asset Management, Mitsui OSK Lines and Sumitomo Chemical.