Hackers Steal $400,000 From City Bank Account

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Good job hackers, way to target everyday citizens that work hard for a living. Here's to hoping these idiots get caught quickly.

They believe computer hackers got access to the city bank account, which is used as a direct deposit to pay workers. It is unknown how much money was taken, but more than $400,000 has been transferred to several accounts over the past two days. "Any time that more than $400,000 actually moves out of a city of Burlington account, there can't possibly be a joke involved," said town administrator Bryan Harrison. "It actually is very chilling."
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Steve said:
Good job hackers, way to target everyday citizens that work hard for a living. Here's to hoping these idiots get caught quickly.
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Two questions, first who would you prefer these low lifes steal from?

Second, since the breech was on the city's payroll system wouldn't the city be liable to make sure everyone is paid? I mean "they stole the money I was going to deposit in your account" doesn't seem to be justification for not paying them.
 
DarkStar_WNY said:
Two questions, first who would you prefer these low lifes steal from?

Second, since the breech was on the city's payroll system wouldn't the city be liable to make sure everyone is paid? I mean "they stole the money I was going to deposit in your account" doesn't seem to be justification for not paying them.
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No, but "we have to sell the police department to pay them" sounds like a valid excuse not to pay someone. Or, "the city has to declare bankruptcy" also sounds like a valid way to not pay someone for a while.
 
Since the money was transferred to accounts, couldn't they just transfer them back?
 
Ashbringer said:
Since the money was transferred to accounts, couldn't they just transfer them back?
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I'm sure it's been transferred several times, to several accounts set up under fake/stolen ID's, withdrawn from ATMs, transferred overseas etc etc etc
 
While I'm sure this wont help the city's financial situation their budget in 2010 was over $33 million so I don't think this would result in a bankruptcy.

Maybe it's just me but looking at those numbers make me wonder, doesn't $4k per resident seem like a lot of money especially when up to a 1/3 of them are likely under 18 years of age?
 
Tytalus said:
No, but "we have to sell the police department to pay them" sounds like a valid excuse not to pay someone. Or, "the city has to declare bankruptcy" also sounds like a valid way to not pay someone for a while.
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I would be OK if they started selling off the Police Departments around here. They can start with MA SP, they have a barracks every 5miles.
 
Yeah why do people freak out? If anything, this is a huge win for some russian guy who can now buy a nice car. All this money is FDIC insured.
 
Unless someone had more than $250,000 in their checking account they are going to get it all back, that's the way the FDIC works.
 
The bank the city uses was hacked, not individual employee accounts. My bad. Still, they should be able to get some - if not all - of that back.
 
"Any time that more than $400,000 actually moves out of a city of Burlington account, there can't possibly be a joke involved," said town administrator Bryan Harrison."
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Don't know what he's talking about! I can think of several involving Union Democrats or Corporate Republicans. I guess thieves really don't like other thieves stealing from them after all...
 
dremic said:
pretty sure that money is fully insured by the government my dude..
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And just where do you think the government will get the money to cover it? Oh yeah, from the taxpayers, some of them will be the very same people whose money was stolen.
 
The taxpayers need to stop complaining about paying for other people's joyrides.


I kid I kid
 
dremic said:
pretty sure that money is fully insured by the government my dude..
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No, that's not how the FDIC works.
One account is only insured up to $250,000, the rest is totally lost.

Also, it can take between months to years to get the insurance money back, depending on the State and bank of which the money was stolen.
 
Red Falcon said:
No, that's not how the FDIC works.
One account is only insured up to $250,000, the rest is totally lost.

Also, it can take between months to years to get the insurance money back, depending on the State and bank of which the money was stolen.
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FDIC insurance does not cover stolen funds. It is for bank failure protection.

Bank may have a blanket bond that covers this situation though.

Also, a lot of consumer protection laws do not apply to business accounts and if the issue is traced to a compromised desktop in the city offices, they are likely not to get anything back. (This is the reason most serious business accounts require RSA tokens to login and to initiate wires...)
 
Radagast~mod said:
FDIC insurance does not cover stolen funds. It is for bank failure protection.

Bank may have a blanket bond that covers this situation though.

Also, a lot of consumer protection laws do not apply to business accounts and if the issue is traced to a compromised desktop in the city offices, they are likely not to get anything back. (This is the reason most serious business accounts require RSA tokens to login and to initiate wires...)
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Well, fine, make sense, damn it. :p
 
And I thought demanding people's money by holding people's computers to ransom with FBI virus was pathetic enough.
 
Steve said:
Good job hackers, way to target everyday citizens that work hard for a living. Here's to hoping these idiots get caught quickly.
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You're implying that most hackers are robin-hood-ish vigilantes that are actually good people.

The reality is that most "hackers" are really little more than common thieves using script-kiddie tools.
 
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