11 convicted in Cosmos Bank cyberattack case

PUNE:

A Pune court has convicted 11 people in connection with a 2018 cyberattack on Cosmos Cooperative Bank, from which approximately ₹94 crore was siphoned off in seven hours through thousands of ATM transactions in India and 28 other countries.

The conviction, the order of which was uploaded on Saturday, is the first such for a hacking of such scale. The attackers used a malware to break into what is known as the bank’s payments switching system and cloned debit cards. Ultimately, the network breach allowed them to fraudulently approve the transactions they made using the cloned cards.

The court of judicial magistrate (first class) Akshi Jain convicted the 11 accused and sentenced them to different periods of imprisonment along with fines of varying amounts.

“The lawyer of the accused said that the accused have been languishing in jail for many years and their period of incarceration must be taken into account while sentencing. However, the prosecutor stated that taking into account the serious nature of the crime, maximum punishment must be awarded. Heard both sides, taking into account the condition of the accused, I am of the opinion of a lesser sentence for the accused. They have spent considerable time in jail and in the interest of justice, it is not appropriate to repeat the years already spent in prison,” the order stated.

Of the 11, Fahim Sheikh, Fahim Khan, Sheikh Jabbar, Mahesh Rathod, Naresh Maharana, Mohammad Jafri, and Eustace Vaz have been sentenced to simple imprisonment for four years, Abdula Sheikh and Bashir Shaikh have been sentenced to simple imprisonment for four years and simple imprisonment for three years, respectively, and Salman Baig and Firoz Shaikh have been sentenced to simple imprisonment for three years. One of the accused persons had died before the pronouncement of the judgment.

Additional commissioner of police Ramnath Pokale said, “We had strong digital evidence against the accused and it was submitted before the court. The court accepted our evidence which led to the conviction of the 11 arrested accused in the case.”

On August 14, 2018, Cosmos Cooperative Bank reported a hack stating that unidentified attackers had siphoned off ₹94.42 crore through ATMs and online transfers. The bank blamed a multinational hacking ring. An aggregate of ₹80.50 crore was lost in ATM withdrawals in 28 countries on August 11 and two days later, the hackers stole ₹13.92 crores through SWIFT transfers, which are used for foreign remittances.

After investigating the case, the police arrested 18 accused from Kolhapur, Ajmer, Indore, and Mumbai.

The police filed a chargesheet in court with the help of CCTV footage and technical investigation.