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Second Bank Hit By 'Sophisticated' Malware Attack, Says Swift (theguardian.com) 32

Posted by msmash from the bank's-sophisticated-security-or-its-lack-thereof dept.
An anonymous reader cites an article on The Guardian: Swift, the global financial messaging network that banks use to move billions of dollars every day, warned of a second malware attack similar to the one that led to February's $81 million cyberheist at the Bangladesh central bank. The second case targeted a commercial bank, Swift spokeswoman Natasha de Teran said, without naming it. It was not immediately clear how much money, if any, was stolen in the second attack. Swift said in a statement that the attackers exhibited a "deep and sophisticated knowledge of specific operational controls" at targeted banks and may have been aided by "malicious insiders or cyber attacks, or a combination of both." The organization, a Belgian co-operative owned by member banks, said that forensic experts believe the second case showed that the Bangladesh heist was not a single occurrence, "but part of a wider and highly adaptive campaign targeting banks."
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Second Bank Hit By 'Sophisticated' Malware Attack, Says Swift More

Second Bank Hit By 'Sophisticated' Malware Attack, Says Swift

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  • "Sophisticated" Malware Attack (Score:5, Funny)

    by U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M ( 4212163 ) on Friday May 13, 2016 @01:34PM (#52106291)

    And by "Sophisticated Malware Attack" they mean "a photo of a cute kitten or puppy".

    A.K.A. "cute-kitten-must-see.jpg.this-is-a-very-dangerous-virus-do-not-open-this-file-you-idiot.exe"

  • What could possibly go wrong ? And we can solve world hunger by adding a zero to every account.

  • I call bullshit on the "wider campaign"... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Friday May 13, 2016 @01:42PM (#52106347)

    What happens here is far simpler: One group got away with an amazing payout and had a real chance of making it even larger. This lead to some people re-focusing their attempts, because who knew before that security at some banks using Swift was this pathetic. And no, all these claims of "advanced" and "sophisticated" really only serve to daemonize the attackers, so the affected banks and Swift have can avoid admitting how massively they have screwed up.

    The whole thing is not a surprise at all. Experts have observed "cheaper than possible" security to be used all around the finance industry in the aftermath of 2008, because management that does not get it is making the decisions and is trying to save money on security (and reliability and people as well) in order to make IT more "profitable". That almost universally costs a lot later.

    We are now at the point where "later" is reached. This will get worse for at least 5...10 years until all the bad decisions of the last few years have been fixed.

    • all these claims of "advanced" and "sophisticated" really only serve to daemonize the attackers

      I confess I've never heard of this technique, but it sounds like a lot of work. I've just been using the daemon() function.

  • Did this (unnamed) bank have a $10 router as well, because someone thought it would be enough, and why spend money on security that isn't thick walls and guards with guns and truncheons?

  • Just when the Swift programming language looked so promising it had to go rogue.

  • Seriously, attacks on bank network security started when they first had bank networks. There is no legitimate excuse for not have impenetrable systems by now. Before anyone says it, yes there is such a thing as bug free software because NASA makes it and their budget is miniscule in comparison to banks!

  • This is what happens when IT is OUTSOURCED! (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 13, 2016 @03:02PM (#52107067)
    I used to have a great job at Citizens Bank employed as a Sr. Infrastructure Engineer on the Middleware team. I was level 3 support , Capacity and Performance SME, root cause analysis.. I also performed system audits. IBM Global - India is taking over IT. In my opinion it's not because they will save a lot of money, in reality it's costing them more. How it appears to the shareholders is less payroll costs because payroll is it's amortized over 7 years. So payroll appears as 1/7th the cost. The additional costs is the lack of efficiency and security. I demonstrated how easy it was for someone with access while troubleshooting an application account information can be extracted without going detected. They have no clue that just because data is masked does not mean it's impossible to access. At a layer in the code the data is available and not encrypted. With an outsourced support model it does not matter if you have an impenetrable system or not. Outsourced application support personnel can easily access financial data. I recommend asking your bank if their IT support is outsourced. If it is.. pull your money out. Find a bank that has an internal bonded IT team. That's the safest bet. This is what happens when CIOs lack technical knowledge and are merely bean counters.

  • "because that's where the money is"

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