Cybergang infects all ATMs in Russian city

A group of fraudsters has been arrested in Yakutsk and Moscow for allegedly compromising all the ATMs in the city of Yakutsk – population: around 210,000 – in the Republic of Yakutia in the Russian Federation.

Three of the men formed the actual criminal group, and the fourth – a Moscow-based malware developer – was “subcontracted” by them and received 100,000 rubles (some $3200) to develop a a custom ATM virus with which they would infect the devices.

Every man had his role in the operation: one who used to work as a head of an IT department obtained access to the ATMs, the second one – a system administrator – infected them, and the third one was supposedly intended to be the money mule.

According to the press release (Google translation) issued by the Ministry of Internal Affairs’ cybercrime division, a coordinated raid of the three’s apartments led to their arrest and the confiscation of copies of the malware and credit card information that – according to the investigators – they didn’t have time to take advantage of.

The malware author was arrested in Moscow a week after. All four have been detained and will likely be charged for creation, use and distribution of malicious computer programs, and hopefully fraud.