Hackers steal millions of dollars from German govt’s Covid-19 financial aid

Team Udayavani, Apr 21, 2020, 9:48 AM IST

Government of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, has lost millions of euros from a website built for distributing coronavirus emergency aid funding as hackers stole the money from the government by creating a copy of the website.

It is said that, hackers first distributed the link of the fake website using a phishing email campaign and gathered the details of the citizens. Next, they requested the financial aid from the official website with all the data they gathered but replaced the original bank details with bank account numbers in which they wanted the money to be deposited.

Only after receiving 576 reports of fraud, the official website was taken down on April 9. The authorities believe that the scam started around mid-March.

The government received 380,000 requests for financial aid but approved only 360,000 requests for transferring the aid, out of these 360,000 requests, some 3,500 to 4,500 requests were a part of the scam.

It is estimated that the German government lost a minimum of €31 million to a maximum of €100 million in the scam.