Globus Bank Limited has requested a court order for the recovery of N962,019,843.35 that was hacked and fraudulently moved electronically from its vault into accounts held at eight commercial banks in an application that was filed before the Lagos Magistrate Court.
The entire amount of N1,755,376,156.34 that was moved from the bank between Monday, June 5 and Friday, June 9, 2023, includes the N962m. The bank has already taken money from the hackers controlled accounts totalling N817,998,969.85.
In an affidavit sworn to by the legal officer, Kosisochukwu Ngene, Globus bank said hackers took advantage of a system glitch in its USSD application between Monday 5th and Friday 9th of June 2023 to process several fraudulent and unauthorized electronic transfer totalling N1,755,376,156.34 (One Billion, Seven Hundred and Fifty-Five Million, Three Hundred and Seventy-Six Thousand, One Hundred Fifty-Six Naira thirty four kobo.69.85 from the accounts of the fraudsters.
The bank claimed that the illicit transfer of the monies to accounts held at eight commercial banks included 709 of its customers.
It said that as soon as it became aware of the error, it immediately alerted all of the concerned banks and asked that the beneficiary accounts be limited.
According to Globus Bank, this was done in accordance with Central Bank of Nigeria regulations to prevent the loss of money that had been fraudulently moved into bank-owned accounts.
Globus Bank then promptly went to the Magistrate Court in the Yaba Magisterial District and got an order requiring the banks to freeze and reverse the sum that had been fraudulently deposited into a number of accounts that were housed in the banks.
“That in response to the order served on the respondents, some of the respondents were able to salvage some money, with the total amount of N962,019,843.35 still owing to the respondents’ banks while the total amount of N817,998,969.85 was returned to the bank.
The respondents’ names, the total amount fraudulently moved from Globus bank, the total amount recovered and returned to Globus, and the total amount still owing are all listed on an Excel document that was also submitted before.
Globus Bank stated that in order for the other banks to reverse and send it the recovered monies, they still need the high court’s order.
The other banks, it continued, have asked the court for an injunction allowing them to reverse and repay the funds that were saved.
As a result, Globus bank Limited is asking the court for the following reliefs;
“An Order of the Court directing all eight banks to promptly reverse and remit to Globus bank Limited the total sum of N962,019,843.35 (Nine hundred and sixty two million, nine hundred and forty three thousand, eight hundred and forty five naira, thirty five kobo), being the outstanding sum still to be salvaged from the fraudulent transfer into several accounts domiciled with the eight Respondents from the Globus bank 709 customers’ accounts, less depleted sum.
“An order directing the eight commercial banks to disclose all account information with regard to the beneficiaries of the transfer funds and the destination accounts”
And for any other orders the court may find appropriate under the circumstances.
Speculations are still going round as to the APT group behind this attack however, banks in Nigeria have suffered a range of attacks from the North Korean Lazarus APT within the year 2018 to 2021 with details of customers put on sale on the darknet while also making use of ransomware infection tactics to hold banking organization to Ransome before decrypting and handing over access to the affected banks data and infrastructure.
Slytech, a Nigerian based Cyber Security Consultancy firm is actively working with the banking organizations affected by this attack in order to restore their systems to status quo as well as beefing up the banks cyber security infrastructure to prevent future attacks like this.