image source, TN Cyber crime dept
Two computer engineers from Nigeria have been accused of hacking several bank accounts in India, including the Tamil Nadu Cooperative Bank, looting around two crores and sending money back to their country.
The police also alleged that they used a software called Key Logger to loot money from banks in various states of India.
Officials say that over the past two years, emails have been sent to banks in various states of India and once the email is clicked by the bank officials, the bank branch’s account details, including passwords used, have been hacked.
Speaking to BBC Tamil, Vinod Kumar, police inspector of the cyber crime branch, said that he and his team stayed in Delhi for ten days and arrested the two. Talking about the manner in which the bank robbery was carried out, Eken Godwin (37) and C Augustine (42) waited for four months and hacked into the cooperative bank accounts in Manadi, Chennai.
Both have studied computer engineering. They came to India from Nigeria two years ago and notarized banks in several states in India. Banks generally use Intranet instead of internet facility in all computers for security reasons.
An intranet is a network that is not connected to the World Wide Web but is made up of computers within a particular organization.
But a co-operative bank in Chennai has internet facility on two computers. After knowing that, they have sent an email to the bank. One day when someone clicks on that email on a computer with internet access, they have remote access to all the transactions on that computer,” says Vinod Kumar.
image source, TN Cyber crime dept
One of the two suspects caught.
A look at the details of the emails sent so far by Nigerians revealed that they all originated from one IP address. The officials found them in Uttam Nagar in Delhi and went there and arrested them.
“Until now, they kept only the minimum amount of looted money for their daily expenses and sent the rest to the Nigerian bank from time to time. The duo transferred the looted money to at least 32 different bank accounts. We continue to monitor some of those accounts. “We identified them through the CCTV footage when they found out which ATM they used most often and withdrew money from there,” said Vinod Kumar.
image source, TN Cyber crime dept
Another suspect caught.
What is a key logger?
Officials say the Nigerians were able to track bank transactions through a software called a key logger. We spoke to cybercrime lawyer Karthikeyan about how the key logger works.
Key logger is available in both software and hardware. This is the software used by these Nigerian people. “To hack with key logger software, hackers send a link in an email. Once they click on that link, they can remotely view the characters being typed on that computer. That means they can see in real time. It’s like they have your keyboard. They immediately know all the information you input and steal the money,” says Karthikeyan.
Karthikeyan says that it is advised to avoid clicking on links with unknown names, email addresses with strange data, etc., because the key logger is very easy to use.
Authorities have found these Nigerian men who robbed in Tamil Nadu remotely hacking a bank in Gujarat. Officials also said that they have given their data to cyber crime branch offices in various states. Therefore, it will be known in which other states they have hacked after Tamil Nadu and Gujarat. Also, they say that evidence has been found for their hacking in 15 banks so far.
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