In the Indian city of Than, a large cybercrime occurred. Unknown hackers gained access to one of the escrow accounts of the National Bank, which stored the money of local construction companies, and stole about 250 million Indian rupees (about 275 million rubles).
The incident, currently being investigated by the authorities, involved a breach in the payment gateway of the targeted company. Through this breach, the cybercriminals manipulated the company’s database, enabling them to significantly increase the balance in the escrow account. They then proceeded to siphon off the funds by making numerous small transactions to various bank accounts, making it more difficult to trace the movement of the money.
The theft was discovered by the company’s employees on April 14th, after noticing irregularities in their debit and credit accounts. Upon conducting a thorough investigation, the company’s management confirmed that their financial portal had indeed been hacked.
What makes this case particularly intriguing is that the hackers repeated their fraudulent scheme a few days later, causing further losses to the construction company.
In their efforts to steal the funds, the hackers created four fictitious companies that served as intermediaries for transferring the money. Although some of these transactions were halted after a complaint to the National Corporation of India payments, by that time, the majority of the funds had already been transferred.
The police are currently investigating the case and, as a result of this incident, vulnerabilities in the banking system have been exposed, prompting a need for stronger cybersecurity measures to be implemented by Indian enterprises in the future.