The Great Bank Robbery: the Carbanak APT by GReAT (Kaspersky Labs’ Global Research & Analysis Team).
From the post:
A great read on how hackers may have pocketed up to $1bn.
Download the full report (PDF).
Before some cyber-defender uses this as another example of why we need a national cyberdefense program, consider this paragraph from the conclusion of the full report:
Despite increased awareness of cybercrime within the financial services sector, it appears that spear phishing attacks and old exploits (for which patches have been disseminated) remain effective against larger companies. Attackers always use this minimal effort approach in order to bypass a victim’s defenses.
In other words, a human opened an infected attachment to an email.
You first question in cyberdefense debates should be:
Will solution X prevent users from opening infected email attachments?
Second question: Does it protect the system despite users opening infected email attachments?
If the answer to both questions is no, you have enough information to make a decision.
An effective cyberdefense must address basic security issues before more exotic ones.