“Global network of cyber criminals stole $45 million from ATMs”
Summary:
This article is about a group of hackers
from all around the world who got together and attacked pre paid debit card
databases. The group eliminated withdrawal limits on debit cards and created
access codes. Then they transferred the access codes to cards with a magnetic
stripe, and then they made withdrawals from ATMs in several countries. Their
first attack was December 22th 2008, when they hacked an Indian database and
stole around $5 million form ATMs across 20 countries. The second attack was
February 19th 2013. This time they hacked a US payment processor handling the
attack in December. In only a few hours they managed to steal $40 million from
ATMs in 20 different countries. In the US, seven hackers have been arrested
from the group’s base in New York. They managed to steal $2,4 million from ATMs
in the US.
This is a summary from the article “Bank
robbery. Global network of cyber criminals stole $45m from ATMs”:
Disinhibition effect:
Disinhibition effect is when people do
things online that they ordinary wouldn´t do face-to-face. According to John
Suler in his “Online Disinhibtion Effect”, there are to types of this effect,
benign Disinhibition and toxic Disinhibition. Benign is when you show unusual
acts of kindness online, while toxic Disinhibition is when you seek out places
of crime or other sites that you would never explore in the real world. In
addition to the two types of Disinhibition effects, Suler mentions six factors
that can lead to this effect; Dissociative Anonymity, Dissociative Imagination,
Invisibility, Asynchronicity, Minimization of Status, and Solipsistic
Introjection.
In the case of the hacker group who stole
around $45 million we can easily see that this is toxic Disinhibition. The
hackers attack databases illegally, and therefore commit a crime. While looking
at the factors, I think that the most likely reason for this crime is
invisibility. The hackers are actually performing a robbery, using a keyboard
and probably while sitting in their own couch or in the kitchen. Nobody see
them, and therefore they feel invisible. They are not physically performing a
robbery with guns or other weapons. I think that they probably wouldn´t rob a
bank if it wasn´t for the possibility of doing it online.
- Ingrid Rossnes
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