Germany’s federal criminal police, Bundeskriminalamt (BKA) carried out home raids on three suspects for executing a large-scale phishing campaign, defrauding internet users of €4 million. The phishing campaign was carried out by the charged suspects between October 3, 2020, and May 29, 2021, as per the evidence gathered by the German Computer Crime Office.
One of the three suspects, a 24-year-old, has been arrested and charged by the BKA, the second, a 40-year-old, has also been charged with 124 acts of computer fraud, while the investigation for the third suspect is still ongoing.
The hackers allegedly defrauded their victims by imitating as legitimate German banks and sending them phishing e-mails that were clones of messages from some real banks.
“These e-mails were visually and linguistically believable based on real bank e-mails. The victims were informed in these letters that their house bank would change their security system – and their own account would be affected [...] The e-mail recipients were thus tricked into clicking on a link, which in turn led to a deceptively real-looking bank page. There, the phishing victims were asked to enter their login data and a current TAN, which in turn enabled the fraudsters to see all the data in the account of the respective victim – including the amount of credit and availability. The perpetrators then contacted the victims and tricked them into revealing further TAN numbers as alleged bank employees. With the TAN, they were then able to withdraw funds from the accounts of the victims.” reads the statement issued by BKA.
The phishing emails reportedly informed the internet users of the changes in their respective bank’s security systems, beseeching the victims to click on an embedded link to continue using the bank’s services. The links redirected victims to a landing page, asking them to enter their credentials and Transaction Authentication Number (TAN), allowing the hackers access to their online banking accounts and withdrawal funds.
According to the BKA, the hackers even used DDoS against the banks to conceal their fraudulent transactions. "In order to carry out their crimes, the accused are said to have resorted to offers from other cybercriminals who worked on the dark net, selling various forms of cyber-attacks as crime-as-a-service." BKA stated in an announcement.
In regard to the active cases of phishing attacks and online fraud, the police urged internet users to take certain cautionary measures, such as never clicking a link or opening file attachments in emails that appear to be from a legitimate bank. If in doubt, the users are recommended to contact their banks personally or obtain information from the bank’s respective websites.
