Last month, hackers were caught attempting to steal USD1 billion from the Federal Reserve Bank in New York. While they were not entirely successful, the hackers were still able to get away with USD80 million.
According to Reuters, the hackers managed to gain access to the inside servers of the Bangladesh Bank and stole its credentials for payment transfers. After acquiring the credentials, the theives then proceeded to bombard the Federal Reserve Bank of New York with nearly three dozen requests to move money from the Bangladesh Bank’s account to entities in the Philippines and Sri Lanka.
During the heist, Deutsche Bank noticed that one of the accounts that they were going to transfer funds to is called the “Shalika Fandation”. Noticing that “Fandation” could be a misspelling of the word “foundation”, Deutsche Bank attempted to seek clarification from the Bangladesh central bank, which caused the heist attempt to fall apart. The so-called foundation, of course, was non-existant.
While a total of USD870 million was stopped before the money could be transferred into various other accounts, the hacker still managed to get away with USD80 million. Bangladeshi authorities have since said that there is little hope of ever catching the hackers or even recovering the money.
Source: Ars Technica, Reuters
