In an increasingly digital world, with the countries around the world opting for a cashless economy, these cyberattacks go to highlight the vulnerabilities of the global financial network and the urgent need to harden and strengthen them. While going cashless provides convenience, a cash economy has immense benefits. An integral approach would be a smarter solution.
According to SWIFT officials, hackers have succeeded yet again in stealing huge sums from banks, following the heist of $81 million from Bangladesh’s central bank using sophisticated techniques.
The attacks underscores the continuity of vulnerabilities in the SWIFT messaging network, which forms the backbone of the world’s financial industry which sees trillions of dollars transferred all around in the world on a daily basis.
“The threat is very persistent, adaptive and sophisticated – and it is here to stay,” reads a letter from SWIFT to its client banks.
These disclosures provide fresh evidence to bank regulators that a lot more needs to be done in terms of online banking security midst a global investigation by Interpol, FBI and authorities from Bangladesh.
Of the multiple attacks launched again the SWIFT network, which includes commercial and central banks, a fifth of them have resulted in funds being stolen said Stephen Gilderdale, head of Customer Security Programme at SWIFT.
Since the February attack on Bangladesh’s central bank, SWIFT has disclosed that there have been 3 more attacks but have not resulted in the loss of funds.
SWIFT has discovered that hackers have refined their social engineering techniques for compromising computer systems at local banks. As per SWIFT’s letter, one such techniques involves allowing technicians to access the bank’s computer systems so as to provide technical support.
“We unfortunately continue to see cases in which some of our customers’ environments are being compromised” by hackers who use social engeneering techniques, who upon gaining access send fraudulent payment instructions through the SWIFT network using the same kind of messages that were previously used during the Bangladesh heist.
As per a top police investigator in Dhaka, some officials from Bangladesh’s central bank have deliberately exposed the bank’s computer systems. He however, declined to identify these officials by name and declined to provide how many such officials have been identified.
These comments from Mohammad Shah Alam, head of the Forensic Training Institute of the Bangladesh police’s criminal investigation department, are growing signs that investigators are finally zeroing in on leads in what has been the world’s biggest cyber heist.
Mohammad Shah Alam went on to say, that investigations have progressed significantly and arrests are likely to happen soon.
The new attacks on SWIFT have tried to replicate the methodology of the Bangladesh heist.
SWIFT has declined to name the victims or the amounts that have been stolen as well as provide any further clue regarding the new cyber heists.
When asked how many such attacks have been attempted, he said, it was “a meaningful number of cases. In all of these cases attackers are suspected of trying to replicate the modus operandi of the Bangladesh attackers.”
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