MOSCOW — Hackers are increasingly stealing directly from banks and other companies and helping organized crime to operate more efficiently, according to the chief of cyber-security firm Kaspersky Lab.
Examples range from infecting cash machines to dispense all their money to thieves to hacking operations-management systems at ports so drugs can be smuggled more smoothly and at less risk, founder and CEO Eugene Kaspersky said in an interview at his Moscow office.
“Hackers have become capable of carrying out very advanced attacks,” Kaspersky said. In many cases, “they infect corporate networks with viruses, which eventually — via files exchanged between departments — get into computers that handle money transfers,” which are usually separate from the main network.
Among recent high-profile hacking victims is Home Depot, which suffered a data breach between April and September. Fifty-three million e-mail addresses and details of 56 million payment cards were exposed.
“Everyone is spying on everyone, stealing information,” Kaspersky said. “Edward Snowden was right, but he was speaking of the U.S. only. In reality, there are cyber-attacks of different origin — linked to native English speakers, to Chinese, to Russian-speaking programmers.”
