Eugene Grygo, Chief Content Editor, FTF News
A story that has gotten little attention but is noteworthy is the $100 million apparently stolen via cyber-fraud in February from the Bangladesh central bank account in the U.S.
The ongoing saga has caused the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Bangladesh Bank and SWIFT officials to issue a statement on May 10, 2016.
“Representatives of the New York Fed, Bangladesh Bank and Swift met in Basel, Switzerland to discuss the cyber fraud event that happened in early February,” according to the statement issued by the New York Fed. “President William Dudley from the New York Fed and Governor Fazle Kabir from the Bangladesh Bank attended the meeting. The parties provided details on the actions taken and exchanged information about the cyber and physical vulnerabilities illustrated by this event.
“All parties stated their concern over this event and their continued commitment to work together to normalize operations. The parties also agreed to pursue jointly certain common goals: to recover the entire proceeds of the fraud and bring the perpetrators to justice, and protect the global financial system from these types of attacks,” according to the May 10 statement.
Initially, hackers attempted to steal $1 billion from the Bangladesh central bank, according to reports via The Wall Street Journal. Apparently, the cyber-thieves got away way with $100 million as the Fed was able to flag as suspicious and block about 35 payment orders after approving some money movements.
A month after the attack, the New York Fed issued a statement on March 9, 2016 that “to date, there is no evidence of any attempt to penetrate Federal Reserve systems in connection with the payments in question, and there is no evidence that any Fed systems were compromised. The payment instructions in question were fully authenticated by the SWIFT messaging system in accordance with standard authentication protocols. The Fed has been working with the central bank since the incident occurred, and will continue to provide assistance as appropriate.”
It’s not exactly clear where the money surfaced but there have been clues.
“Some of the $101 million stolen ended up in the Philippines casino industry and was used to buy gambling chips,” according to a recent WSJ story. “About $20 million of the stolen funds has been recovered. The attack was one of the most successful high-tech bank robberies in history, in part because the thieves timed their attacks over a weekend where Bangladesh and Fed officials were out of touch.”
Since the initial attack and confusion, officials are concerned that the software facilitating the fraud could be used against other banks.
Something tells me that there will be more juicy chapters to this story and the makings of a case study on how to avoid cyber-fraud.
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