Malta’s Staminal Bank of Valletta Victimized by Overseas Hackers

Delaware, USA – February 15, 2019 – Another bank was brought to ensure its customers about their accounts’ being effectively protected and unaffected after the security breach. Bank of Valletta with the Maltese Government being its largest stakeholder had to knock off its services including email services, operations with cards, internet and mobile banking, and also ATMs after unauthorized penetration to the bank system and the attempt to pull off €13m to foreign banks. The Prime Minister assured that the hackers’ attempt to transfer money to the banks in Hong Kong, the US, the UK, and the Czech Republic was blocked and the bank of Valletta (BOV) ensured its system’s security before activating the operations on Thursday.

The standstill in operations of the bank controlling half of the country’s economy brought the real mess into local businesses using the BOV-operated equipment for card payment and other banks’ POS equipment while BOV cards payments. It was discovered during the initial investigation that the attack was controlled by some overseas hackers, however, there was no further official information about the specifics of the security breach and certain cybercriminals. In the light of numerous attacks at core banking (1, 2, 3) and online services, the banking sector remains victimizable and highly attractive for threat actors. Spot the suspicious activity in the company’s infrastructure with the APT Framework that detects signs of APT using the most efficient existing methods and technologies: https://my.socprime.com/en/integrations/apt-framework-hpe-arcsight