Rouble-crypto trading soars as sanctions hit Russian currency

Trading volumes between the Russian rouble and the Tether cryptocurrency spiked sharply on Monday as the local currency tumbled to a record low on Western sanctions, data shared with Reuters showed.

Rouble-denominated trades with the Tether - a so-called stablecoin - hit $29.4 million, their highest this year and around three times more than a week earlier, according to Arcane Research, an Oslo-based digital asset researcher.

Stablecoins are a type of cryptocurrency designed to avoid the wild fluctuations that plague bitcoin. In theory, their steady value allows users to protect funds or savings in times of economic stress.

The figures suggest surging interest in crypto among Russians after Western sanctions imposed on Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine took a toll on the local currency.

The Russian rouble tumbled to a record low in volatile trade on Monday, losing a third of its value so far this year, after the West ramped up sanctions including blocking banks from the SWIFT global payments system. 

Trading between the rouble and bitcoin (BTC), whose 13-year history has been peppered with wild price swings - was more muted, the data showed.

Rouble-bitcoin trading on Thursday topped $16 million, its highest this year, as Russia launched its invasion. On Monday it totalled about $8.5 million.

"People with the rouble are trying to get out of it due to the drastic devaluation after all the sanctions," said Arcane's Bendik Norheim Schei.

"Under the current market conditions, I'm not surprised to see investors, at least those in Russia, seeking stablecoins and not taking on the market risk of BTC. This is about saving their funds, not investing."

-reuters-

UK wants to cut Russia off from SWIFT: defense minister

LONDON - Britain would like to cut off Russia from the SWIFT global interbank payments system and will continue to lobby reluctant allies to take that step, Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said on Friday.

"We would like to go further, we'd like to do the SWIFT system - that is the financial system that allows the Russians to move money around the world to receive payments for its gas - but ... these are international organizations and if not every country wants them to be thrown out of the SWIFT system, it becomes difficult," Wallace told BBC TV.

US President Joe Biden said on Thursday that United States and the European Union have opted not to cut Russia off from SWIFT, but he said they could revisit that issue.

On Thursday, major western countries including the United States and Britain announced sanctions on Russia, stretching from its banks to elites, in response to Russia invading Ukraine after months of diplomatic dialogue failed to bear fruit.

Wallace said Britain would continue to lobby its allies to win support for a move on SWIFT.

"We will work all the magic, do everything we can in diplomacy," he said.

-reuters-

SWIFT says helping Bangladesh Bank rebuild network after cyber heist

NEW DELHI - International payments network SWIFT said on Saturday it had signed an agreement with Bangladesh's central bank to help it rebuild its infrastructure after hackers used it to steal $81 million in 2016 in the world's biggest cyber heist.

Unidentified hackers, suspected to be from North Korea, carried out the heist by breaching Bangladesh Bank's systems and using the SWIFT network to send fraudulent money transfer orders to the New York branch of the US central bank, with which the Dhaka bank has an account.

SWIFT's comments came after the New York Fed on Friday agreed to provide "technical assistance" to Bangladesh Bank in its lawsuit against Manila-based Rizal Commercial Banking Corp (RCBC). RCBC was used to funnel the money, much of which disappeared into the casinos of the Philippines.

RCBC has called the legal action Bangladesh Bank filed on Thursday as beyond the US jurisdiction, "completely baseless" and "nothing more than a thinly veiled PR campaign" to shift blame from itself. 

"SWIFT, the New York Fed and Bangladesh Bank have worked together since the cyber fraud event occurred ... to recover the entire proceeds of the crime and to bring the perpetrators to justice in cooperation with law enforcement from other jurisdictions," SWIFT said in a statement to Reuters.

The firm would continue to lend its support to international efforts to protect the global financial system from future cyber attacks, it added.

SWIFT - the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, a cooperative used by thousands of financial institutions around the world - did not say if it would also help Bangladesh Bank with the court case in New York.

A person familiar with the technical assistance agreement said the Fed would prepare affidavits and clear employees to testify at hearings or a trial, and also allow Bangladesh Bank to interview employees. It would also provide relevant non-privileged documents and information to Bangladesh Bank or to the court.

Bangladesh Bank lawyer Ajmalul Hossain QC declined to comment on SWIFT's role in the legal case against RCBC.

In its suit filed with the US District Court in Manhattan, Bangladesh Bank accused RCBC and dozens of others, including several top executives, of involvement in a "massive" and "intricately planned" multi-year conspiracy to steal its money.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Nepal bank latest victim in heists targeting SWIFT system

KATHMANDU - A bank in Nepal is the latest victim in a string of cyber heists targeting the global SWIFT bank messaging system, though most of the stolen funds have been recovered, 2 officials involved in the investigation confirmed on Tuesday.

Hackers last month made about $4.4 million in fraudulent transfers from Kathmandu-based NIC Asia Bank to countries including Britain, China, Japan, Singapore and the United States when the bank was closed for annual festival holidays, according to Nepal media reports.

All but $580,000 of the funds were recovered after Nepal asked other nations to block release of the stolen money, Chinta Mani Shivakoti, deputy governor of the Central Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB), told Reuters.

Brussels-based SWIFT said last month that security controls instituted after last year's $81 million theft from Bangladesh's central bank helped thwart some recent hacking attempts, but it warned that cyber criminals continue to target SWIFT customers.

SWIFT or the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication is a co-operative owned by its user banks. It declined to comment on the NIC Asia Bank hack, saying it does not discuss specific users.

Representatives with NIC Asia Bank, one of dozens of private banks in Nepal, were not available for comment.

The chief of Nepal's Central Investigation Bureau, Pushkar Karki, confirmed to Reuters that his agency was investigating the theft.

KPMG is also involved in the investigation, according to Nepali media reports. KPMG representatives could not immediately be reached for comment.

The central bank intends to release guidelines on how to thwart such incidents after investigations are completed, according to Shivakoti.

"The incident showed there are some weaknesses with the IT department of the bank," Shivakoti said.

SWIFT said in a statement on Tuesday that it offers assistance to banks when it learns of potential fraud cases, then shares relevant information with other clients on an anonymous basis.

"This preserves confidentiality, whilst assisting other SWIFT users to take appropriate measures to protect themselves," it said.

"We have no indication that our network and core messaging services have been compromised," SWIFT added.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

NY Fed, Bangladesh central bank to resume normal money transfers - sources

NEW YORK - The Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Bangladesh's central bank have agreed to withdraw additional payment security measures put in place after one of the world's biggest cyber heists, the theft of $81 million from Bangladesh Bank's account at the Fed, two sources said.

The decision comes after SWIFT, the global financial messaging platform, promised in May to strengthen security on software tools used by its clients and to develop new tools that would spot a compromised account and raise a red flag when a payment instruction deviates from normal patterns.

The decision was taken at a meeting in New York this week between officials from Bangladesh Bank, the New York Fed and SWIFT, said a source close to Bangladesh Bank who has direct knowledge of the matter. They have agreed on a tentative timeline to withdraw the additional security measures but the source declined to give details.

"(The New York Fed and Bangladesh Bank) want to use (only) SWIFT for secure communication," said the source, declining to be named as he was not authorised to brief the media. "We are talking about normalising our communication channels as soon as possible."

The New York Fed and SWIFT could not immediately be reached for comment.

In early February, hackers used stolen Bangladesh Bank credentials to send three dozen SWIFT messages to transfer nearly $1 billion from its Fed account, eventually managing to route $81 million to a bank in the Philippines. Most of the money was laundered through casinos in Manila and remains missing.

Following the heist, Bangladesh Bank initiated a new protocol under which the Fed could only clear any SWIFT request from Dhaka after a voice authentication. Fed officials had to call one of two or three Bangladesh Bank officials whose voice samples were shared with the Fed.

A senior Bangladesh Bank official in Dhaka, who declined to be named, said more time was needed "to improve the system" before moving back to a SWIFT-only transfer mechanism.

Both sources said the New York Fed wanted to do away with the additional measure as it delayed genuine transfer instructions.

SWIFT has told Bangladesh Bank its system was secure and that the Asian bank needed to tighten its own defenses to prevent criminals from hacking into their computer systems.

Bangladesh Bank spokesman Subhankar Saha said he was not aware of the agreement and would comment only after the bank's delegation came back from the United States.

The bank said in a statement on Wednesday that its officials discussed with the New York Fed and SWIFT "certain technical details" of the heist to enhance their understanding of how the fraud occurred and "steps that have been and will be taken to remediate the event."

The Bangladeshi delegation also requested the New York Fed to put more pressure on the Philippines' Rizal Commercial Banking Corp (RCBC), to recover the rest of the stolen money, said the source close to Bangladesh Bank. The funds were routed to four accounts at the bank before they disappeared into casinos in the city.


The New York Fed in June wrote to the Philippines' central bank, prodding it to help Bangladesh Bank retrieve the money.

Bangladesh Bank officials believe the nudge from the Fed was one of the reasons the Philippines central bank this month slapped a record fine of P1 billion ($21 million) on RCBC in connection with the heist.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Bangladesh central bank officials to meet New York Fed over stolen funds

DHAKA - Bangladesh central bank officials will hold a meeting with the New York Federal Reserve next month to try and speed up efforts to recover $81 million stolen by hackers from its account at the Fed, officials in Dhaka said. [$81 million: $81M heist: The money trail]

More than four months after the hackers broke into the computer systems of Bangladesh Bank and transferred money into bank accounts in Philippines using the SWIFT payment network, there is no breakthrough yet in investigations.

Most of the money has disappeared into casinos in the Philippines and remains missing.

While the criminal investigation has made slow progress, Bangladesh Bank has focused on getting back the money, leaning on the New York Fed and the Philippines central bank for help.

Bangladesh Bank deputy governor Mohammad Razee Hassan, who heads its financial intelligence unit, will meet Fed officials in New York on July 15, two officials at the bank in Dhaka said.

Both said the talks follow a meeting in Basel in Switzerland in May where the heads of the Bangladesh central bank, the New York Fed and representatives from SWIFT agreed to help Bangladesh Bank get back its money.

One official involved in the preparations for the meeting said on Tuesday they would also be discussing future arrangements on the central bank's deposits held in New York.

"Its a follow-up meeting for recovery of funds. But there are other things as well. Fed is holding our account. We are their customers, there are things we need to discuss," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity, citing bank rules.

The official said he was not sure if SWIFT would be part of the meeting. SWIFT had no immediate comment to make.

Bangladesh police investigators have said that SWIFT technicians introduced security loopholes when connecting the messaging network to Bangladesh's first real-time gross settlement (RTGS) system late last year.

SWIFT, a cooperative owned by 3,000 financial institutions, has rejected those allegations and said its messaging platform was not breached in the Bangladesh hack.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

SWIFT says second bank hit by malware attack

SWIFT, the global financial messaging network that banks use to move billions of dollars every day, warned on Thursday of a second malware attack similar to the one that led to February's $81 million cyber heist at the Bangladesh central bank.

The second case targeted a commercial bank, SWIFT spokeswoman Natasha de Teran said, without naming it. It was not immediately clear how much money, if any, was stolen in the second attack.

While SWIFT had previously warned that the Bangladesh heist was not an isolated incident, and said its core messaging system remained intact, confirmation of a second attack on a bank will likely increase scrutiny on the security of a network that is a linchpin of the global financial system.

SWIFT said in a statement that the attackers exhibited a "deep and sophisticated knowledge of specific operational controls" at targeted banks and may have been aided by "malicious insiders or cyber attacks, or a combination of both."

The organization, a Belgian co-operative owned by member banks and used by 11,000 financial institutions globally, said that forensic experts believe the second case showed that the Bangladesh heist "was not a single occurrence, but part of a wider and highly adaptive campaign targeting banks."

News of a second case comes as authorities in Bangladesh and elsewhere investigate the February cyber theft from the Bangladesh central bank account at the New York Federal Reserve Bank. SWIFT has acknowledged that that scheme involved altering SWIFT software to hide evidence of fraudulent transfers, but that the messaging system it controls was not compromised.

In both cases SWIFT said insiders or cyber attackers had succeeded in penetrating the targeted banks' systems, obtaining user credentials and submitting fraudulent SWIFT messages that correspond with transfers of money.

In the second case SWIFT said attackers had also used a kind of malware called a "Trojan PDF reader" to manipulate PDF reports confirming the messages in order to hide their tracks.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Bangladesh Bank officials say to meet NY Fed, SWIFT; seek to recover stolen money

DHAKA - Bangladesh's central bank chief will meet the head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and a senior executive from global financial messaging service SWIFT next week to seek the recovery of about $81 million stolen by hackers, officials in Dhaka said.

Two Bangladesh Bank officials said the bank believed both the New York Fed and SWIFT bore some responsibility for the February cyber heist. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity since they were not authorized to brief the media.

The bank's governor Fazle Kabir, New York Fed President William Dudley and a SWIFT representative will meet in Basel, Switzerland around May 10, they and another person briefed by the central bank said. It was not immediately clear who would represent SWIFT.

Spokeswomen for SWIFT and the New York Fed declined comment.

Hackers tried to steal nearly $1 billion from Bangladesh Bank's settlement account at the New York Fed in early February by sending fraudulent transfer orders through SWIFT.

Of the 35 transfer orders sent, 30 were blocked. Four transfers to a Philippine bank for a total of $81 million went through while a $20 million transfer to a Sri Lankan company was reversed because the hackers mis-spelled the name of the firm.

"There is a responsibility the New York Fed has to accept," said one of the Bangladesh Bank officials. "If you stopped 30 transactions, why did you not stop the others?

"SWIFT also bears responsibility," the official said. "It's supposed to be a closed system. Now you have seen they have disclosed that there have been attacks previously on its software."

Last week, SWIFT acknowledged that the Bangladesh Bank attack was not an isolated incident but one of several recent criminal schemes that aimed to take advantage of the global messaging platform used by about 11,000 financial institutions.

The other Bangladesh Bank official said lawyers would be present at the meeting. Ajmalul Hussain, a Dhaka-based lawyer hired by the central bank to help it retrieve the funds, could not be reached for comment. His office said he was out of the country.

It was not immediately known if Bangladesh Bank had retained any U.S. or European law firm to help recover the money.

However the bank said in an internal report in March it was considering "preparing the ground to make a legitimate claim for the loss of funds" against the New York Fed "through a legal process."

Both central bank officials said Kabir, the governor, would be accompanied by an official from the accounts and budgeting department on the trip to Basel and would seek the recovery of the stolen funds.

Basel is the headquarters of the Bank for International Settlements, a group of major central banks.

The stolen $81 million was sent to a bank in the Philippines and quickly passed on to casinos and casino agents. Most of it remains missing. However, one junket operator has returned about $10 million to authorities in Manila and promised to hand over another $5 million.

One of the Bangladesh Bank officials expressed confidence that there would be a resolution to the dispute soon, though he didn't provide any evidence for the optimism.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

SWIFT network says aware of multiple cyber fraud incidents

SWIFT, the global financial network that banks use to transfer billions of dollars every day, warned its customers on Monday that it was aware of "a number of recent cyber incidents" where attackers had sent fraudulent messages over its system.

The disclosure came as law enforcement authorities in Bangladesh and elsewhere investigated 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.

Monday's statement from SWIFT marked the first acknowledgement that the Bangladesh Bank attack 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 on Monday in a notice seen by Reuters.

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 confirmed to Reuters the authenticity of the notice.

SWIFT, or the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, is a cooperative owned by 3,000 financial institutions.

Also on Monday, 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.

BAE's evidence suggested that hackers manipulated SWIFT's Alliance Access server software, which banks use to interface with SWIFT's messaging platform, to cover their tracks.

BAE said it could not explain how the fraudulent orders were created and pushed through the system.

But SWIFT provided some evidence about how that happened in its note to customers, saying that in most cases the modus operandi was similar.

It said the attackers obtained valid credentials for operators authorized to create and approve SWIFT messages, then submitted fraudulent messages by impersonating those people.

FireEye, the internet security company whose Mandiant unit was hired by Bangladesh Bank to help investigate the heist, said the same group behind that hack had probably attacked other financial targets.

"FireEye has observed activity in other financial services organizations that is likely by the same threat actor behind the cyber attack on the Bank of Bangladesh," Vivek Chudgar, Mandiant's senior director for the Asia Pacific said in a statement emailed to Reuters.

FireEye declined to go into detail.

Rakesh Asthana, the World Informatix Cyber Security CEO, who is overseeing Bangladesh Bank's probe into the hack, declined to discuss the other attacks that SWIFT referred to.

But he urged banks to conduct independent security assessments to make sure their networks are secure and prevent future attacks.

“SWIFT builds on security practices established by the customer itself and therefore it is imperative that in the wake of this attack, customers using SWIFT Alliance Access must strengthen their cyber security posture,” Asthana said

FOLLOWING THE MONEY

Cyber security experts said more attacks could surface as SWIFT's banking clients look to see if their SWIFT access has been compromised.

Shane Shook, a banking security consultant who investigates large financial crime, said hackers were turning to SWIFT and other private financial messaging platforms because such attacks can generate more revenue than going after consumers or small businesses.

"These hacks specifically target financial institutions because smaller efforts result in much larger thefts," he said. "It's much more efficient than stealing from consumers."

Justin Harvey, chief security officer with Fidelis Cybersecurity, said hackers followed the money and would be drawn into such schemes in hopes of emulating a big heist like the one on Bangladesh Bank.

"After the Bangladesh Bank heist became public, every other attacker out there is looking to see if they can do the same," he said.

SWIFT spokeswoman Natasha Deteran told Reuters that the commonality in these cases was that internal or external attackers compromised the banks’ own environments to obtain valid operator credentials.

"Customers should do their utmost to protect against this," she said in an email to Reuters.

SWIFT told customers that the security update must be installed by May 12.

"We have made the Alliance interface software update mandatory as it is designed to help banks identify situations in which attackers have attempted to hide their traces - whether these actions have been executed manually or through malware," she said.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Bangladesh Bank hackers compromised SWIFT software

The attackers who stole $81 million from the Bangladesh central bank probably hacked into software from the SWIFT financial platform that is at the heart of the global financial system, said security researchers at British defense contractor BAE Systems.

SWIFT, a cooperative owned by 3,000 financial institutions, confirmed to Reuters that it was aware of malware targeting its client software. Its spokeswoman Natasha Deteran said SWIFT would release on Monday a software update to thwart the malware, along with a special warning for financial institutions to scrutinize their security procedures.

The new developments now coming to light in the unprecedented cyber-heist suggest that an essential lynchpin of the global financial system could be more vulnerable than previously understood to hacking attacks, due to the vulnerabilities that enabled attackers to modify SWIFT's client software.

Deteran told Reuters on Sunday that it was issuing the software update "to assist customers in enhancing their security and to spot inconsistencies in their local database records."

The software update and warning from Brussels-based SWIFT, or the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, come after researchers at BAE, which has a large cyber-security business, told Reuters they believe they discovered malware that the Bangladesh Bank attackers used to manipulate SWIFT client software known as Alliance Access.

BAE said it planned to go public on Monday with a blog post about its findings concerning the malware, which the thieves used to cover their tracks and delay discovery of the heist.

The cyber criminals tried to make fraudulent transfers totaling $951 million from the Bangladesh central bank's account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in February.

Most of the payments were blocked, but $81 million was routed to accounts in the Philippines and diverted to casinos there. Most of those funds remain missing.



Investigators probing the heist had previously said the still-unidentified hackers had broken into Bangladesh Bank computers and taken control of credentials that were used to log into the SWIFT system. But the BAE research shows that the SWIFT software on the bank computers was probably compromised in order to erase records of illicit transfers.

Deteran reiterated on Sunday that "the malware has no impact on SWIFT's network or core messaging services."

The SWIFT messaging platform is used by 11,000 banks and other institutions around the world, though only some use the Alliance Access software, Deteran said.

SWIFT may release additional updates as it learns more about the attack in Bangladesh and other potential threats, Deteran said.

SWIFT is also reiterating a warning to banks that they should review internal security.

"While we keep all our interface products under continual review and recommend that other vendors do the same, the key defense against such attack scenarios is that users implement appropriate security measures in their local environments to safeguard their systems," Deteran said.

Adrian Nish, BAE's head of threat intelligence, said he had never seen such an elaborate scheme from criminal hackers.

"I can't think of a case where we have seen a criminal go to the level of effort to customize it for the environment they were operating in," he said. "I guess it was the realization that the potential payoff made that effort worthwhile."

A Bangladesh Bank spokesman declined comment on BAE's findings.

A senior official with the Bangladesh Police's Criminal Investigation Department said that investigators had not found the specific malware described by BAE, but that forensics experts had not finished their probe.

Bangladesh police investigators said last week that the bank's computer security measures were seriously deficient, lacking even basic precautions like firewalls and relying on used, $10 switches in its local networks.

Still, police investigators told Reuters in an interview that both the bank and SWIFT should take the blame for the problems.

"It was their responsibility to point it out but we haven't found any evidence that they advised before the heist," said Mohammad Shah Alam, head of the Forensic Training Institute of the Bangladesh police's criminal investigation department, referring to SWIFT.

THWARTING FUTURE ATTACKS

The BAE alert to be published on Monday includes some technical indicators that the firm said it hopes banks could use to thwart similar attacks. Those indicators include the IP address of a server in Egypt the attackers used to monitor use of the SWIFT system by Bangladesh Bank staff.

The malware, named evtdiag.exe, was designed to hide the hacker's tracks by changing information on a SWIFT database at Bangladesh Bank that tracks information about transfer requests, according to BAE.

BAE said that evtdiag.exe was likely part of a broader attack toolkit that was installed after the attackers obtained administrator credentials.

It is still not clear exactly how the hackers ordered the money transfers.

Nish said that BAE found evtdiag.exe on a malware repository and had not directly analyzed the infected servers. Such repositories collect millions of new samples a day from researchers, businesses, government agencies and members of the public who upload files to see if they are recognized as malicious and help thwart future attacks.

Nish said he was highly confident the malware was used in the attack because it was compiled close to the date of the heist, contained detailed information about the bank's operations and was uploaded from Bangladesh.

While that malware was specifically written to attack Bangladesh Bank, "the general tools, techniques and procedures used in the attack may allow the gang to strike again," according to a draft of the warning that BAE shared with Reuters.

The malware was designed to make a slight change to code of the Access Alliance software installed at Bangladesh Bank, giving attackers the ability to modify a database that logged the bank's activity over the SWIFT network, Nish said.

Once it had established a foothold, the malware could delete records of outgoing transfer requests altogether from the database and also intercept incoming messages confirming transfers ordered by the hackers, Nish said.

It was able to then manipulate account balances on logs to prevent the heist from being discovered until after the funds had been laundered.

It also manipulated a printer that produced hard copies of transfer requests so that the bank would not identify the attack through those printouts, he said.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Bangladesh Bank exposed to hackers by cheap switches, no firewall: police

DHAKA -- Bangladesh's central bank was vulnerable to hackers because it did not have a firewall and used second-hand, $10 switches to network computers connected to the SWIFT global payment network, an investigator into one of the world's biggest cyber heists said.

The shortcomings made it easier for hackers to break into the Bangladesh Bank system earlier this year and attempt to siphon off nearly $1 billion using the bank's SWIFT credentials, said Mohammad Shah Alam, head of the Forensic Training Institute of the Bangladesh police's criminal investigation department.

"It could be difficult to hack if there was a firewall," Alam said in an interview.

The lack of sophisticated switches, which can cost several hundred dollars or more, also means it is difficult for investigators to figure out what the hackers did and where they might have been based, he added.

Experts in bank security said that the findings described by Alam were disturbing.

"You are talking about an organization that has access to billions of dollars and they are not taking even the most basic security precautions," said Jeff Wichman, a consultant with cyber firm Optiv.

Tom Kellermann, a former member of the World Bank security team, said that the security shortcomings described by Alam were "egregious," and that he believed there were "a handful" of central banks in developing countries that were equally insecure.

Kellermann, now chief executive of investment firm Strategic Cyber Ventures LLC, said that some banks fail to adequately protect their networks because they focus security budgets on physically defending their facilities.

POLICE BLAME BANK, SWIFT

Cyber criminals broke into Bangladesh Bank's system and in early February tried to make fraudulent transfers totalling $951 million from its account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Most of the payments were blocked, but $81 million was routed to accounts in the Philippines and diverted to casinos there. Most of those funds remain missing.

The police believe that both the bank and SWIFT should take the blame for the oversight, Alam said in an interview.

"It was their responsibility to point it out but we haven't found any evidence that they advised before the heist," he said, referring to SWIFT.

A spokeswoman for Brussels-based SWIFT declined comment.

SWIFT has previously said the attack was related to an internal operational issue at Bangladesh Bank and that SWIFT's core messaging services were not compromised.

A spokesman for Bangladesh Bank said SWIFT officials advised the bank to upgrade the switches only when their system engineers from Malaysia visited after the heist.

"There might have been a deficiency in the system in the SWIFT room," said the spokesman, Subhankar Saha, confirming that the switch was old and needed to be upgraded.

"Two (SWIFT) engineers came and visited the bank after the heist and suggested to upgrade the system," Saha said.

GLOBAL WHODUNIT

The heist's masterminds have yet to be identified.

Bangladesh police said earlier this week they had identified 20 foreigners involved in the heist but they appear to be people who received some of the payments, rather than those who initially stole the money.

Bangladesh Bank has about 5,000 computers used by officials in different departments, Alam said.

The SWIFT room is roughly 12 feet by 8 feet, a window-less office located on the eight floor of the bank's annex building in Dhaka. There are four servers and four monitors in the room.

All transactions from the previous day are automatically printed on a printer in the room.

The SWIFT facility should have been walled off from the rest of the network. That could have been done if the bank had used the more expensive, "managed" switches, which allow engineers to create separate networks, said Alam, whose institute includes a cyber-crime division.

Moreover, considering the importance of the room, the bank should have deployed staff to monitor activity round the clock, including weekends and holidays, he said.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Bangladesh seeks FBI's help in investigating central bank heist

DHAKA - Bangladesh has formally sought assistance from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation to track down the cyber crooks who stole $81 million from its central bank's U.S. account, the interior minister said on Saturday.

Unknown hackers breached the computer systems of Bangladesh Bank in early February and attempted to steal $951 million from its account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which it uses for international settlements.

Some attempted transfers were blocked, but $81 million was transferred to accounts in the Philippines in one of the largest cyber heists in history.

The central bank governor resigned on Tuesday, as details emerged in the Philippines that $30 million of the money was delivered in cash to a casino junket operator in Manila, while the rest went to two casinos.

"We sought the FBI's assistance when a group of FBI met with me for investigating the central bank heist last month," Interior Minister Asaduzzaman Khan told Reuters.

An U.S. embassy official in Dhaka told Reuters Washington stood ready to assist the government of Bangladesh in its investigation.

A senior police official involved in the investigation said that an FBI team was expected to visit the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of police in Dhaka on Sunday. The CID was also coordinating with Interpol to track down the perpetrators.

"We are trying to find out what type of security there was, what safety measures were taken, and how the thieves penetrated the fire wall," he said.

The chief of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party said on Saturday that if elected her party would ensure real autonomy for the central bank.

"There will be no interference or influence from the political party," Begum Khaleda Zia said at a party conference.

A central bank official said two engineers from secure network operator SWIFT (the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) had started tests on Saturday.

He said the system would be upgraded if needed.

"Bangladesh is a member of the SWIFT society, so we use its service for international transactions," the official added.

(Reporting by Serajul Quadir; Editing by Ros Russell and Catherine Evans)

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com