Hackers again access Swift fund-transfer system
May 13, 2016
Shah Sheikh (1294 articles)
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Hackers again access Swift fund-transfer system

Hackers have again gained access to the world’s largest system for transferring funds among banks, a breach the network’s operator said indicates a wide-ranging effort to penetrate the financial system.

The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, a cooperative that runs the international messaging system between banks, said the attack targeted a commercial bank and managed to send Swift messages using the bank’s valid codes. It followed the theft in February of $81 million from Bangladesh’s account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

The Bangladesh case provided startling evidence of the vulnerability of parts of the financial system that had been thought highly secure.

The notice by Swift said in both cases its own system wasn’t breached but that hackers accessed the fund-transfer system using the customers’ credentials and malicious software to cover their tracks.

“Forensic experts believe this new discovery evidences that the malware used in the earlier reported customer incident was not a single occurrence, but part of a wider and highly adaptive campaign targeting banks,” Swift said in a notice to banks reviewed by The Wall Street Journal but set to go out Friday.

Source | MarketWatch