VLADIMIR LEVIN AND CITYBANK

The coming up story:

- For over two hundred years of bank robberies where you saw a group of people five or
six people, maybe ten sometimes. They went into the bank, had masks on their face,
guns on both hands, tried grab everything they could and get out of there with full of
cash. But as banks started coming online and being digitally connected to each other, a
whole new way to rob a bank started happening. No needs of guns, just someone out
there sit in a coffee shop or library with his laptop turn on. But the lost it could make is
unlimited.
- In the summer of 1994, the world had recorded one of the biggest online bank robbery
in history by a Russian computer staff Vladimir Levin with one of the biggest bank by
then - Citibank.
- Back to the early days of the internet when its not as popular in present. There was
ARPANET, Telenet, Tymnet, and some others. Each one of these networks spoke a
completely different protocol. They both kind of had their own ecosystem. One of these
early competing networks was Telenet (This is NOT Telnet). By 1980 Telenet was
available in seven major cities and US phone companies. One of the reasons makes
Telenet so widely used was because is was free to connect to this network. All you need
was a modem and a phone line. Lots of big companies like Apple, Boeing, Westinghouse
used Sprintnet at that time (Telenet was renamed to Sprintnet as it became more
popular), includes Citibank.
- Citibank is a major bank is the US and headquartered in New York City. Citibank used
Sprintnet to communicate between their major offices and other banks that were
connected to it. The Citibank offices were in Singapore, Manila, Tokyo, New York, Milan,
Paris, … All of them were all connected over Sprintnet.

The scenario:

- Everything started with a couple of hackers in St. Peterburg, Russia. In an attempt

finding if any of the Citibank computers were connected to the internet so they could go
through Citibank to get onto the internet. Because at that time, is cost to get onto the
internet but it was free to connect to Sprintnet so the hackers just want to find a free
way to get on the internet (through Sprintnet). They tried for over a year bit didn’t really
find anything. Most connections simply wouldn’t let you do anything at all or were
password protected.
- One day the systems that normally asked them for a password was wide open. Some
one had used that computer and forgot to log out. And that’s all two hackers need to
 get access to the system, get others account’s passwords and more. They discovered the
exact commands and logins needed to transfer money from one bank to another,
includes log in, type in the bank, bank account number, the amount to transfer, and
then the money would go. That’s was amazing. But instead of abusing, they tell this to
Vladimir Levin – an IT guy works in a small software firm. All the information with just
100 dollars. I can’t believe it.

Vladimir Levin:

- At that days he was thirty years old, living in St. Peterburg, Russia. Just a normal
computer staff, but he had a bit of a dark side to him. Perhaps it was because of growing
up and seeing the lawless side of Russia.
- After got these hackers works. Vladimir planned to make a big robbery from Citybank.
- After checked his access to the Citybank. Vladimir sent a friend to Finland and create a
transfer with the amount of money was 400.000$ straight to an account at the bank in
Finland and hit Enter. His friend just needed to wait and withdraw that money. And it
worked. Everything was too easy he thought. Except this transfer raised an alert in the
system in New York City department. Since this was a lot of money so Citybank called
the FBI.
- The difficult thing at that time is neither FBI nor IT department of Citybank had anybody
specialize in cyber-security. That’s why they couldn’t find any way to stop the transfer.
But they know that Vladimir won’t stop his dirty work so they had to be ready for the
next wave.
- For the next six months, Vladimir had done a lot of money transfer to various bank in all
over the world and FBI had stopped them and try to trace back to Vladimir location.
Finally, they got Vladimir arrested at the airport of Holland, right the moment the
arrived there to withdraw the money.

The number:

- After all, Vladimir Levin has attempted forty fraudulent money transfers totaling
10.000.000 dollars. Luckily the bank recovered it all but 400.000$ at the first transfer.
- He was sentenced to three years in prison and had to pay back 240.000$ in restitution.

The References:

1. https://darknetdiaries.com/transcript/23/
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Levin
3. https://www.britannica.com/topic/cybercrime/ATM-fraud#ref829197