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 Unknown hackers still managed to get away with about $80 million,
one of the largest known bank thefts in history.
The hackers breached Bangladesh Bank's systems and stole its
credentials for payment transfers, two senior officials at the bank
said. They then bombarded the Federal Reserve Bank of New York with
nearly three dozen requests to move money from the Bangladesh Bank's
account there to entities in the Philippines and Sri Lanka, the
officials said.
Four requests to transfer a total of about $81 million to the
Philippines went through, but a fifth, for $20 million, to a Sri
Lankan non-profit organization was held up because the hackers
misspelled the name of the NGO, Shalika Foundation.
Hackers misspelled "foundation" in the NGO's name as "fandation",
prompting a routing bank, Deutsche Bank, to seek clarification from
the Bangladesh central bank, which stopped the transaction, one of
the officials said.
There is no NGO under the name of Shalika Foundation in the list of
registered Sri Lankan non-profits. Reuters could not immediately
find contact information for the organization.
Deutsche Bank declined to comment.
At the same time, the unusually large number of payment instructions
and the transfer requests to private entities - as opposed to other
banks - raised suspicions at the Fed, which also alerted the
Bangladeshis, the officials said.
The details of how the hacking came to light and was stopped before
it did more damage have not been previously reported. Bangladesh
Bank has billions of dollars in a current account with the Fed,
which it uses for international settlements.
The transactions that were stopped totaled $850-$870 million, one of
the officials said.
Last year, Russian computer security company Kaspersky Lab said a
multinational gang of cyber criminals had stolen as much as $1
billion from as many as 100 financial institutions around the world
in about two years.
Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's son Qusay took $1 billion from
Iraq's central bank on the orders of his father on the day before
coalition forces began bombing the country in 2003, American and
Iraqi officials have said. In 2007, guards at the Dar Es Salaam bank
in Baghdad made off with $282 million.
MONEY RECOVERED
Bangladesh Bank has said it has recovered some of the money that was
stolen, and is working with anti-money laundering authorities in the
Philippines to try to recover the rest.
A bank spokesman could not be reached for comment late on Thursday.
The recovered funds refer to the Sri Lanka transfer, which was
stopped, one of the officials said.
Initially, the Sri Lankan transaction reached Pan Asia Banking Corp
<PABC.CM>, which went back to Deutsche Bank for more verification
because of the unusually large size of the payment, a Pan Asia
official said. "The transaction was too large for a country like
us," the official said. "Then (Deutsche) came back and said it was a
suspect transaction." A Pan Asia spokesman could not immediately be
reached for comment.
The dizzying, global reach of the heist underscores the growing
threat of cyber crime and how hackers can find weak links in even
the most secure computer networks.
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More than a month after the attack, Bangladeshi officials are
scrambling to trace the money, shore up security and identify
weaknesses in their systems. They said there is little hope of ever
catching the hackers, and it could take months before the money is
recovered, if at all.
FireEye Inc's <FEYE.O> Mandiant forensics division is helping
investigate the heist, people familiar with the matter told Reuters
on Thursday.
The sources said Silicon Valley-based FireEye, which has
investigated some of the biggest cyber thefts on record, was brought
in by World Informatix, a smaller firm that is advising Bangladesh
Bank on the investigation.
Security experts said the perpetrators had deep knowledge of the
Bangladeshi institution's internal workings, likely gained by spying
on bank workers.
The Bangladesh government, meanwhile, is blaming the Fed for not
stopping the transactions earlier. Finance Minister Abul Maal Abdul
Muhith told reporters on Tuesday that the country may resort to
suing the Fed to recover the money.
"The Fed must take responsibility," he said.
The New York Fed has said its systems were not breached, and it has
been working with the Bangladesh central bank since the incident
occurred.
The hacking of Bangladesh Bank happened sometime between Feb. 4-5,
over the Bangladeshi weekend, which falls on a Friday, the officials
said. The bank's offices were shut.
Initially, the central bank was not sure if its system had been
breached, but cyber security experts brought in to investigate found
hacker "footprints" that suggested the system had been compromised,
the officials said.
These experts could also tell that the attack originated from
outside Bangladesh, they said, adding the bank is looking into how
they got into the system and an internal investigation is ongoing.
The bank suspects money sent to the Philippines was further diverted
to casinos there, the officials said.
The Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp, which oversees the gaming
industry, said it has launched an investigation. The country's
anti-money laundering authority is also working on the case.
(Additional reporting by Jim Finkle in BOSTON, Jonathan Spicer in
NEW YORK, Farah Master in HONG KONG and Shihar Aneez in COLOMBO;
Editing by Paritosh Bansal and Raju Gopalakrishnan)
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