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30Apr16

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Hackers' $81 Million Sneak Attack on World Banking

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Tens of millions of dollars siphoned from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. A shadowy set of casinos in the Philippines. A large bank in Bangladesh with creaky technology. An unknown — and perhaps uncatchable — group of anonymous thieves with sophisticated hacking skills.

What unites this curious cast of characters and enabled one of the most brazen digital bank heists ever is a ubiquitous and highly trusted international bank messaging system called Swift.

Swift — the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication — is billed as a supersecure system that banks use to authorize payments from one account to another. "The Rolls-Royce of payments networks," one financial analyst said.

But last week, for the first time since hackers captured $81 million from Bangladesh's central bank in February, Swift acknowledged that the thieves have tried to carry out similar heists at other banks on its network by sneaking into the beating heart of the global banking system.

"There are many banks out there right now saying, 'There but for the grace of God go us,'" said Gareth Lodge, a payments analyst at Celent, a financial consulting firm.

The admission that the attack was not a one-time event in a developing country but perhaps part of a broader threat has thrust Swift into a spotlight, raising questions about how securely money is being moved around the world. Some financial security experts point out the Swift system is only as safe as its weakest link.

The attack also reflects a growing sophistication among digital criminals, who for years have been breaching personal bank accounts and stealing credit card credentials. The thieves in Bangladesh may have spent months lurking inside the central bank's computers, studying how to steal the necessary credentials to gain access to Swift.

[Source: By Michael Corkery, The New York Times, 30Apr16]

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Privacy and counterintelligence

This document has been published on 23May16 by the Equipo Nizkor and Derechos Human Rights. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.