{
	"id": "a4fb9362-f8f1-4d08-b239-caad68bd47a0",
	"created_at": "2026-04-06T00:11:07.3196Z",
	"updated_at": "2026-04-10T13:11:24.451468Z",
	"deleted_at": null,
	"sha1_hash": "6388db1f9ad6470f442f5ed96ff0c9807bcbe530",
	"title": "Prison Time for 11 Involved in India's Cosmos Bank Heist",
	"llm_title": "",
	"authors": "",
	"file_creation_date": "0001-01-01T00:00:00Z",
	"file_modification_date": "0001-01-01T00:00:00Z",
	"file_size": 109862,
	"plain_text": "Prison Time for 11 Involved in India's Cosmos Bank Heist\r\nBy Jayant Chakravarti\r\nArchived: 2026-04-05 16:29:17 UTC\r\nATM / POS Fraud , Cybercrime , Fraud Management \u0026 Cybercrime\r\nNorth Korean-Led Heist Nabbed $13.5 Million in 2018 (@JayJay_Tech) • April 25, 2023    \r\nImage: Shutterstock\r\nAn Indian court convicted 11 people for their roles in a North Korean heist of $13.5 million in 2018 from Pune-based Cosmos Cooperative Bank.\r\nSee Also: Experts Offer Insights from Theoretical to the Realities of AI-enabled Cybercrime\r\nA judicial magistrate first class court in Pune on April 15 passed an order convicting 11 people accused of stealing\r\nin August 2018 up to $1.76 million from Cosmos Cooperative Bank. The Pune police cybercrime cell said that\r\nnine of the accused will serve four years in prison and two will serve three years.\r\nA Pune police official told Information Security Media Group that all 11 accused were sentenced after admitting\r\nto their roles in the cyber heist.\r\nCosmos Cooperative Bank, which has 140 branches across India and over 2 million customers, said in its annual\r\nreport for 2018-19 that it had suffered two separate cyberattacks in 2018 - one on Aug. 11 and the other on Aug.\r\n13. Cybercriminals cashed out more than $10 million from domestic and international ATMs and fraudulently\r\ntransferred $1.7 million to a Hang Seng Bank account in Hong Kong.\r\nhttps://www.bankinfosecurity.com/prison-time-for-11-involved-in-indias-cosmos-bank-heist-a-21854\r\nPage 1 of 2\n\nPune police did not name the threat actor responsible for the attacks, but the United Nations in a 2019 report\r\nattributed the thefts to North Korea. The hereditary totalitarian regime that has governed the country since 1948\r\nhas long underwritten criminal activity, including financially motivated hacking, in a quest for hard currency it\r\nuses to fund development of weapons of mass destruction.\r\nThe Cosmos heist was a \"well-planned and highly coordinated operation that bypassed three main layers of\r\ndefense contained in International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL) banking/ATM attack mitigation\r\nguidance,\" the U.N. report concluded.\r\nThe U.S. government responded to a spate of ATM withdrawal attacks, including an attack against the Banco de\r\nChile, by issuing an alert to banks to be on the lookout for indicators of similar incidents.\r\nThe Indian bank said the first cyberattack involved cybercriminals targeting its ATM infrastructure. Though it did\r\nnot disclose how the attack had taken place, it said the cybercriminals used malware to sever the ATM\r\ninfrastructure from its core switching system, ensuring that the system did not receive real-time information about\r\ncash withdrawals from ATMs.\r\nThe cybercriminals carried out more than 12,000 transactions at overseas ATMs using cloned Visa debit cards and\r\nmore than 2,800 transactions at domestic ATMs using cloned RuPay debit cards, stealing up to $1.76 million in\r\nunder four hours.\r\nThe second attack involved cybercriminals targeting the SWIFT infrastructure to fraudulently transfer $1.7 million\r\nto the Hong Kong-based bank account.\r\nThe Pune police cybercrime cell, which later took over the investigation, arrested seven suspected money mules in\r\nSeptember 2018 based on video footage obtained from multiple ATM outlets. It said the suspects were possibly\r\ninvolved in stealing over $4 million in December 2017 from Chennai-based City Union Bank as well (see: Seven\r\nArrests in Cosmos Bank Heist).\r\nWith reporting by ISMG's Mihir Bagwe in Mumbai.\r\nSource: https://www.bankinfosecurity.com/prison-time-for-11-involved-in-indias-cosmos-bank-heist-a-21854\r\nhttps://www.bankinfosecurity.com/prison-time-for-11-involved-in-indias-cosmos-bank-heist-a-21854\r\nPage 2 of 2",
	"extraction_quality": 1,
	"language": "EN",
	"sources": [
		"ETDA"
	],
	"origins": [
		"web"
	],
	"references": [
		"https://www.bankinfosecurity.com/prison-time-for-11-involved-in-indias-cosmos-bank-heist-a-21854"
	],
	"report_names": [
		"prison-time-for-11-involved-in-indias-cosmos-bank-heist-a-21854"
	],
	"threat_actors": [],
	"ts_created_at": 1775434267,
	"ts_updated_at": 1775826684,
	"ts_creation_date": 0,
	"ts_modification_date": 0,
	"files": {
		"pdf": "https://archive.orkl.eu/6388db1f9ad6470f442f5ed96ff0c9807bcbe530.pdf",
		"text": "https://archive.orkl.eu/6388db1f9ad6470f442f5ed96ff0c9807bcbe530.txt",
		"img": "https://archive.orkl.eu/6388db1f9ad6470f442f5ed96ff0c9807bcbe530.jpg"
	}
}