Scotland Yard arrested eight people this week who they suspect of stealing £1.3 million ($2.1 million) from Barclays Bank customers in April using a physical device to intercept computer communications, police said Friday.
Criminals connected a KVM (keyboard, video and mouse) device to a 3G router inside a Barclay's Bank branch in the North London area of Swiss Cottage by having one of their group pose as an IT engineer and claim to be there to repair computers, police said.
A KVM switch can be used legitimately to help business users work remotely from a computer. The hardware itself is unsophisticated and can be obtained from most computer stores or online.
"Barclays were able to recover a significant amount of the monies stolen," police said. "Those responsible for this offence are significant players within a sophisticated and determined organised criminal network, who used considerable technical abilities and traditional criminal know-how to infiltrate and exploit secure banking systems."
The men, aged between 24 and 47, are currently in custody in London police stations after being arrested Thursday and Friday, police said.
The arrests for the Barclay's attack come on the heels of arrests made a week ago in a similar plot to attack Santander banks in a similar KVM-facilitated breach. Police did not say if the two sets of arrests were connected.
[Image courtesy of London Metropolitan Police.]
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