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by dredmorbius 4140 days ago
A key differentiator for banks vs. many other service providers is that financial transfers can be reversed. Releases of information however cannot be.

So where a bank has a risk of an unauthorized financial transaction, there are multiple options to claw that back (or to shift the risk to other parties, notably merchants).

A disclosure, though, of account information is a different case, and here the results can be damaging to the banks and their customers. One instance I'm generally aware of is an increasing number of disclosures pertaining to offshore banking, many uncovered by the the ICIJ (International Consortium of Investigative Journalists: http://www.icij.org/) and the Guardian. Again, the case involves banks, but it's rather more difficult to reverse transactions when it's your client list and balances, or communications, which have spilled.

Many revealed by insiders, as it turns out.
2 comments
aidos 4140 days ago
That's an interesting point, though it's a pretty thin silver lining on a very dark cloud. Being able to undo the operation doesn't really soften the blow of having hackers inside your bank sending outgoing video feeds of employee's screens.

Do you think they'll be getting back the money in this case? Presumably the people involved know enough about the operations to have moved the cash to somewhere out of reach before being exposed.

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vanzard 4139 days ago
> financial transfers can be reversed.

Not this time: hackers withdrew some of the money from ATMs.

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dredmorbius 4139 days ago
Fair point. As the responses note, the damage here is usually limited -- ATMs carry only so much cash each, and (usually) only dispense up to a few hundred dollars (or equivalents) at a time. There've been some exceptions where an exploit is found and utilized in mass effect at many locations in a short period. That takes a high level of organization though.
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ams6110 4139 days ago
The total amount of cash and the per-withdrawal limits in an ATM limits the loss there. You can't steal millions of dollars from an ATM.
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tedivm 4139 days ago
These guys stole $45 million from ATMs- http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/10/nyregion/eight-charged-in-...
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ams6110 4139 days ago
On Feb. 19, cashing crews were in place at A.T.M.'s across Manhattan and in two dozen other countries ... Starting at 3 p.m., the crews made 36,000 transactions and withdrew about $40 million from machines in the various countries in about 10 hours

I stand corrected. That's quite impressive and amazing that they had that many people involved and nobody tipped it off.

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