The security firm Group-IB and the Russian government’s cybersecurity investigatory unit, Department K, claim to have curbed the theft of a billion rubles. All due to information sharing. a forensic analysis of Russia’s largest bank, Sberbank of Russia, suspected that someone was attacking its online banking operation. It was discovered that someone was circumventing its SMS-based payment verification feature and stealing money from its customers.

An unnamed 40-year-old man from the Volga River city of Togliatti was arrested by the Russian cybersecurity police. The prolific Russian cybercriminal exploited the online banking systems of various Russian banks in order to perform more than 5,000 fraudulent transactions from as far back as August 2011.


“The investigation of this case — from the first moment when Group-IB received a complaint from a victim to when the perpetrator was apprehended — was conducted in record time, in less than six months. Thus, we managed to prevent thefts from Russian banks on the amount of 1 billion Roubles ($34 Million)” said Group-IB CEO, Ilya Sachkov. “This was the first case investigated within the European Cyber Security Federation (ECyFed) union, which includes Group-IB, CyberDefcon, and CSIS.”