Kenya police bust ring of hackers in multimillion-shilling KRA, bank thefts
Some of the suspects arrested for transnational crimes including drug trafficking and cybercrime in Nairobi. PHOTO | JEFF ANGOTE | NATION MEDIA GROUP
Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA), several blue-chip banks, a parastatal and a supermarket chain are some of the institutions penetrated by an international cybercrime syndicate that took off with hundreds of millions of shillings – before they were all seized on Monday and Tuesday.
Working with insiders and relatives of “prominent politicians”, the crooks had formed an international band that installed malware into the systems that allowed them to take control of the institutions’ computers and steal what police sources said would run into hundreds of millions. (A malware is a software that disables the systems to enable hacking and transfer of money without detection).
