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[legionof1]

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Banks have always had a strangely relaxed stance regarding cybersecurity, for that matter.
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Because banks as an institution are rather immune to direct hacking damage(not hacking itself). Banks are riddled with double checks and cross checks with other banks to prevent damaging direct attacks on the institution. Far easier to rob a bank in person of physical funds, unless you have access to multiple sets of customer data. And if you have that credit card fraud is faster and more rewarding and harder to track. Factor in that attacking a bank via the internet is just about the closest thing to a global crime that exists in modern law. Banks don't have to care about the front end because the back-end is a steel trap protected by every nation they conduct business in.
   

[Dioxine]

Banks have always had a strangely relaxed stance regarding cybersecurity, for that matter.

Somehow I'm not surprised - why should they care for money getting stolen... these are insured, and as we all know, banks are too big to go bankrupt... Sure it's the biggest banks, but are there really that many independent small and medium banks, or just a huge interconnected network of a few big ones and their clients...? Poland's national bank, for example, belongs (partially) to the CityGroup.

I'm curious, do you mean someone deliberately hijacked/infected his computer in particular?

Details are unclear, and I don't think it was an attack on him specifically. He woke in the middle of the night, when his computer turned itself on and started to work hdd's like crazy. He cut the power and didn't relaunch it before retrieving hdd data using another machine, formatting system drives and reinstalling. There was no data loss either. Case in point is, he's skilled and paranoid about security, yet it didn't help him at all.

I'm actually quite distressed by how you downplay the capabilities of cyber-criminals. While they lack resources of nation-states, cyber warfare is cheap and invisible; and once developed, state-funded soft can and will find its way into the world of organized crime, especially in places and times of high corruption. It wouldn't be possible in Cold War US, but nowadays the scrutiny is much less strict. It's also no secret that Chinese and even NK spies managed to procure a staggering body of secret knowledge from the US; it is also no secret that nation-states are not the only actors who use spies, or that some spies do not mind making some extra cash on the side.

Hardware backdoors - there is indeed little factual knowledge on this; it only surfaced a few times regarding backdoors in military chips sold by country x to country y. However, I'd be surprised if countries like US didn't strike any deals with hardware producers like Intel to install backdoors, because it was pretty clear that who controls the Intel, will have an enormous strategical advantage once computerization becomes prevalent. Also, considering the complexity of microchips, such backdoors could be indetectible. It is just a theory, but major powers DO try to avoid using foreign-made computer hardware for their militaries, if possible...

[Dioxine]

Since both links are dead now, I'm locking and unpinning this thread.