Interior Minister Roumen Petkov presided at the October 22 launch of cybercrime.bg, a website to gather information about cyber-crimes in Bulgaria.

The ambitious project, part of the ministry’s efforts in fighting cyber-crime, was launched days after media reports about a major online bank fraud.

On October 18, commercial national television station bTV reported that a hacker had attacked the bank accounts of a businessman from the town of Vratsa. The report said that Vesko Kamenov, owner of Beton CB, had complained that money had gone missing from his bank account at the Vratsa branch of UniCredit Bulbank. An investigation found that between 11.30am and 2pm on September 14, four bank transfers to a total value of 47 860 leva were made from Kamenov’s accounts.
The hacker attack emanated from London, police said.

Kamenov’s office computer was hacked and full information about his bank account was copied. Using this information, the hacker ordered a transfer of 15 980 leva from Kamenov’s account to an account at Central Cooperative Bank, another transfer of 9780 leva to an account at Allianz Bulgaria, a 15 900 leva transfer to an account at First Investment Bank and a fourth transfer of 6200 to an account at DSK Bank.

The four people in whose names these accounts were held transferred the money to foreign banks, being paid commissions for doing so. BTV said that one of the four transferred money to two bank accounts in Kiev. Hours after the transactions, Kamenov discovered the fraud and alerted the authorities. His bank accounts were blocked, and later 6200 leva was returned by DSK Bank and 9780 leva by Allianz Bulgaria. Police were seeking to recover a further 6955 leva.

UniCredit Bulbank said that it was not responsible for the rest of the money because the transfer had been the result of a hacker attack.

Police said that a Trojan computer virus had been implanted in Kamenov’s computer on September 12, opening the way for the fraud. Kamenov’s computer lacked protection against such viruses, police said.

According to privacy experts at UniCredit Bulbank, clients are advised not to visit suspicious websites from the computer used for online banking services.

On October 20, Interior Ministry computer crimes section head Yavor Kolev gave details of a separate cyber-crime scheme, involving credit card fraud.

Consumers were sent e-mails with various offers. When the website mentioned in the offer is opened, a Trojan virus goes to work and all data from the user’s computer is copied. It was a trademark method of Russian hackers, Kolev said.

There was a peak in such fraud in June and July, prompting Interior Ministry computer fraud squad officials to hold meetings with banks in Bulgaria.

“We took some measures and now this kind of fraud is almost impossible,” Kolev said. Not only banks and clients have been targets this year.

Nearly 700 hacker attacks were registered against the polling system of Information Services, the company responsible for counting the votes after Bulgaria’s May 2007 MEP elections. At the 2006 presidential elections, the number of such attacks was close to 5000. In early September this year, the Agriculture Ministry website came under attack, when for some hours, access to the website was blocked by a hacker presenting himself as a Turkish citizen.