Maharashtra SIT to probe Cosmos Bank cyber theft of Rs 94 crore

The Maharashtra government has constituted a special investigation team (SIT) headed by deputy commissioner (economic offences wing and cyber cell) Jyotipriya Singh to probe into the Rs 94.42 crore cyber robbery at Cosmos Bank. The team comprises members from forensic institutions in Hyderabad, Mumbai police and cyber security experts from private sector.

Besides, Maharashtra police’s cyber-security head and the official chief information security officer (CISO) of the department will also be a part of the team along with three inspectors.

“The cyber attack on Cosmos Bank is a challenge before the police and we have started the investigation,” Pune police commissioner K Vekatesham said.

DCP Singh told HT his team would assist and guide the investigators on technical details. “We would look into area domain expertise, switch, network compromise, forensic domains like gathering details of malware act and malware samples and other core technical aspects,” he said.

On August 14, Cosmos Bank announced that a multinational hacking ring siphoned off ~94.42 crore from the pool account of the Pune-headquartered bank on August 11 and 13. Chairman Milind Kale called it an attack on the Indian banking industry from multinational cyber criminals operating from 22 nations.

System is safe: NPCI

The National Payments Council of India (NPCI) has blamed the Cosmos Bank’s vulnerable “IT infrastructure” for the theft.

Bharat Panchal, head, risk management, NPCI, issued a statement saying that its systems were foolproof and that the cyber fraud took place within the bank’s digital infrastructure. The NPCI’s response has come in the wake of bank chairman Kale’s statement that it was an attack on India’s banking industry and not Cosmos Bank alone.

“This has happened due to malware-based attack on the bank’s IT system which caused a fraud. Under the attack, maximum transactions have been reported from outside India,” Panchal said in the statement.

(With inputs from agencies)

First Published: Aug 16, 2018 23:19 IST