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Symantec said that a group dubbed Odinaff has infected 10 to 20
Symantec customers with malware that can be used to hide
fraudulent transfer requests made over SWIFT, the messaging
system that is a lynchpin of the global financial system.
Symantec's research provided new insight into ongoing hacking
that has previously been disclosed by SWIFT. SWIFT Chief
Executive Gottfried Leibbrandt last month told customers about
three hacks and warned that cyber attacks on banks are poised to
rise.
SWIFT and Symantec have not identified specific victims beyond
Bangladesh Bank. Symantec said that most Odinaff attacks
occurred in the United States, Hong Kong, Australia, the United
Kingdom and Ukraine.
Symantec said it would share technical information about Odinaff
with banks, governments and other security firms.
The company in May said it believed the Bangladesh heist was
carried out by a group known as Lazarus, which was also
responsible for attacks on SWIFT customers in Southeast Asia as
well as the 2014 hack of Sony Pictures Entertainment.
The U.S. government has blamed North Korea for the Sony attack.
Symantec researcher Eric Chien said his firm has not confirmed
that North Korea was behind Lazarus, but that the high level of
sophistication of its work suggests involvement by a nation
state.
Odinaff, on the other hand, appears to be a financially
motivated criminal group, not a nation state, he added.
SWIFT spokeswoman Natasha de Terán said that the messaging
cooperative's customer security intelligence team had sent a
warning about Odinaff's activities to its members in the early
summer.
That warning included technical indicators to help thwart
potential attacks and a description of the group's habits, Terán
said.
Symantec said it believed that Odinaff is linked to Carbanak, a
hacking group that has been targeting banks and merchant
point-of-sale systems since at least 2014.
The two groups employ similar tactics in carrying out attacks
and have used the same IP addresses to connect to their servers,
according to Symantec.
(Reporting by Jim Finkle in Boston; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
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