Many of us are wondering whether money we deposit into our local bank accounts is safe following the recent events where hackers broke into local bank BOV and moved 13 million euro to international accounts. The gadgets team spoke to local IT and Finance experts to find out how siphoning off millions of euros could have happened and if we, as a customers, should be worried about the safety of our money.
The How
How hackers managed to infiltrate themselves into the BOV system is debatable. We spoke to a number of IT experts who explained that the hackers probably had inside banking knowledge and have been closely monitoring our local bank for some time. Monitoring is done to find a loophole in the bank’s security which would allow them to infiltrate the system and create a transaction which mimics normal banking transactions.
Another plausible argument is that vulnerability in the bank’s software allowed for an attack or that a manual error in the IT infrastructure created a loophole. Some IT experts even believe that this is not something that happened overnight but rather that it has been happening for some time. They believe that money was being transferred slowly, chipping at the system, and only when large amounts were transferred the system flagged it.
Security
Several experts in the field have informed us that this unlikely event could have happened to any bank both locally and internationally and money invested in locally operating banks is safe due to highly regularised processes and government guarantees. On the other hand, experts advise that financial companies operating outside local government guarantees should only be used with small amounts of money to avoid any big financial losses should a cyber attack occur.
It is reassuring to know that our finances are secure with our local banks. Although, as customers, we experienced some disruptions while systems were being restored, the inconvenience was three-fold for our local bank’s staff who worked round the clock to return everything to working order as swiftly as possible.
