Russian 'Cron' Cyber Gang Arrested for Raiding Bank Accounts

A group of 16 Russian hackers who managed to seize more than $800,000 from Russian bank customers using malware loaded onto Android devices have been arrested, according to cybersecurity firm Group-IB.

The gang, which called itself Cron like the name of malware used to infect users' devices, duped customers into downloading malware via bogus banking applications or lured them to infected websites that housed banking Trojans.

Once a mobile device was infected, the Trojan would automatically steal money from the victim's account and transfer it to any of the more than 6,000 bank accounts controlled by the hackers, according to Group-IB.

The group is suspected of infecting more than 1 million Russian smartphones and compromising an average of 3,500 devices a day over the course of nearly a year.

But after pilfering Russian banks like Sberbank, Alfa Bank, and others, the group was adjusting its malware program to attack banking customers in Great Britain, Germany, France, US, Turkey, Singapore, Australia, and other regions around the world, according to Group I-B. In November, the Russian law enforcement teamed up with Group-IB to identify and arrest the members of the Cron group.

Read more about Cron here.