Cenbank says victim of attempted cyber heist

Sanctions extension seen

MOSCOW, Dec 2, (Agencies): Hackers broke into accounts at the Russian central bank earlier this year by faking a client’s credentials and attempted to steal $45 million, the bank said in a report released on Friday.

The bank said it managed to recover some of that amount — $26 million — but it did not say if that meant the rest had been stolen.

It did not identify the hackers. It said they broke into a system the central bank operates and that gives its clients access to correspondent accounts opened within the bank.

Out of the $26 million the bank said it was able to retrieve, it said some was frozen in bank accounts elsewhere that the hackers had opened in order to siphon off the money, while in other cases the central bank had been able to freeze transfers from correspondent accounts.

The cyberattack was mentioned in an annual report the bank published on stability within the financial system.

“Cyber risks ... can potentially have implications for financial stability if cyber attacks are aimed against strategically important banks, central banks and financial infrastructure facilities,” the report said.

Russia said earlier on Friday it had uncovered a plot by foreign spy agencies to sow chaos in Russia’s banking system via a coordinated wave of cyber attacks and fake social media reports about banks going bust.

Russia has been on high alert for foreign-inspired cyber attacks since US officials accused the Kremlin of being involved in hacks on Democratic Party emails during the US presidential election.

US Vice President Joe Biden said at the time that the United States would mount a “proportional” response to Russia. Since then, there have been a number of cyber attacks affecting Russian institutions, though it is unclear if they were linked to the row between Moscow and Washington.

Biden

European Council President Donald Tusk says he thinks the European Union will extend sanctions against Russia, but that it will be harder to preserve the West’s unity on Moscow when Donald Trump is US president.

Tusk spoke to Polish private television station TVN24 on Thursday to mark his two years in the EU office.

He says France, Germany and the United States have supported him in maintaining a cohesive response to Russia’s military assertiveness and that he expects another extension of economic and political sanctions on Moscow to be approved in January.

However, Tusk says it may be harder to preserve the unity after Trump takes office Jan 20. He says Trump expressed more concern about Britain’s exit from the EU than about Russia when they spoke recently.

It will be harder to keep the West united toward Russia with Donald Trump as United States president than it has been with Barack Obama, European Council President Donald Tusk said in comments published on Thursday.

Trump’s election promise to improve Washington’s chilly relations with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin have caused jitters within the EU, particularly in eastern member states like Poland and the Baltics.

Putin seemed to respond to Trump in his annual state of the nation address on Thursday, saying Moscow wanted to get along with the incoming US administration and was looking to make friends not enemies.

“Keeping European unity towards Russia in the conflict with Ukraine, and more broadly also in global issues, was possible also thanks to the large support from President Obama,” Tusk told Polish TVN24 broadcaster. “Today, I think that after the election and the victory of Donald Trump, it will be harder to build such unequivocal and uniform policy of the whole western world towards Russia. But one cannot given in,” he said.