Cyber Fraud At SWIFT – $81 Million Stolen From Central Bank

Tuesday, April 26, 2016
By Paul Martin

By: Mark O’Byrne, GoldCore
GoldSeek.com
Tuesday, 26 April 2016

Swift, the vital global financial network that western financial services companies, institutions and banks use for all payments and transfer billions of dollars every day, warned its customers yesterday evening that it was aware of cyber fraud and a number of recent “cyber incidents” where attackers had sent fraudulent messages over its system and $81 million was apparently stolen from a central bank.

As reported by Reuters, the disclosure came as law enforcement agencies investigate the February cyber theft of $81 million from the Bangladesh central bank account at the New York Federal Reserve Bank. Swift has acknowledged that the scheme involved altering Swift software on Bangladesh Bank’s computers to hide evidence of fraudulent transfers.

Yesterday’s statement from Swift marked the first acknowledgement that the cyber attack on the New York Federal Reserve Bank was not an isolated incident but one of several recent criminal schemes that aimed to take advantage of the global messaging platform used by some 11,000 financial institutions.

“Swift is aware of a number of recent cyber incidents in which malicious insiders or external attackers have managed to submit Swift messages from financial institutions’ back-offices, PCs or workstations connected to their local interface to the Swift network,” the group warned customers.

The warning, which Swift issued in a confidential alert sent over its network, did not name any victims or disclose the value of any losses from the previously undisclosed attacks.

Swift, or the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, is a co-operative owned by 3,000 financial institutions. Also, Swift released a security update to the software that banks use to access its network to thwart malware that security researchers with British defense contractor BAE Systems said was probably used by hackers in the Bangladesh Bank heist.

The Rest…HERE

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