London bank hit by computer raiders

Deutsche Bank has admitted to vnunet.com that its City of London offices were hit by computer thieves this week, who escaped with expensive computer hardware.

The theft, which is being investigated by City of London police, occurred on Monday night. A source within the bank told vnunet.com that up to 50 motherboards and I/O boards were stolen in the raid on the "company's secure servers".

Other sources revealed that Sun Microsystems equipment was targeted in the raid. Sun equipment has been at the centre of a number of so-called steal-to-order incidents in the UK this year.

A Deutsche Bank spokesman told vnunet.com: "I can confirm that Deutsche Bank was the victim." Other news services have so far been unable to discover the identity of the bank.

A bank source said the estimated cost of the raid is about £1m and added that the servers involved include several production (trading back-office) systems. Deutsche Bank would not comment on the value of the equipment stolen, merely saying that it was "negligible".

Speculation that the theft has left customer data at risk and wiped millions of pounds off the bank's records was refuted by the Deutsche Bank spokesman. "No client details were taken as there was no sensitive information on the kit," he said. This is because the operating system and motherboards were part of development work at the bank, he added.

A spokeswoman for City of London police declined to reveal details of the theft but confirmed: "Sun systems are particularly attractive to thieves as [they are] state of the art."

She added: "We have had eight to 10 thefts of these items over the last month and we identify it as a problem. It is fairly expensive sophisticated equipment which thieves can sell on the black market."

City of London police are trying to persuade institutions to tighten their security procedures, said the spokeswoman.

The Deutsche Bank representative confirmed that the bank will be "looking at how this happened".