Bangladesh Bank, NY Fed Discuss Suing Manila Bank For Heist Damages

An anonymous reader shares a report: Bangladesh's central bank has asked the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to join a lawsuit it plans to file against a Philippines bank for its role in one of the world's biggest cyber-heists, several sources said. The Fed is yet to respond formally, but there is no indication it would join the suit. Unidentified hackers stole $81 million from Bangladesh Bank's account at the New York Fed in February last year, using fraudulent orders on the SWIFT payments system. The money was sent to accounts at Manila-based Rizal Commercial Banking Corp and then disappeared into the casino industry in the Philippines.

Sounds like a good movie plot

[shaitand]

I mean sure, the movie would have less in common with reality than TFS by the end but the heist, the laundering through the casinos... sounds like a great start.

Re:

[HiThere]

Well, one reason for it to be modded that way is that few in the US know much about the Philippines, but they've definitely got opinions about Trump.

Real meaning of SWIFT

[Anonymous Coward]

Suspicous wired inter-bank financial transaction

Precedent

[Anonymous Coward]

What court would hear this case? Philippines has already issued fines. If individuals (non-officers) within the bank choose to collude, can the bank be responsible if they meet minimum infosec requirements/regulations? And it's not like there are international cyber security regulations anyway. At the time, SWIFT was punk and didn't even strong recommend MFA.

The need for an international court or tribunal, similar to maritime, is obviously necessary. But it will remain unadopted with the United States actin

Re:

[HiThere]

You clearly have strong opinions about how the singularity will manifest...and that's in direct opposition to the very concept.

The Technological Singularity is incredibly dangerous to humanity, and if we could depend on rational humans running things I'd be strongly in favor of avoiding it. Unfortunately, it may be our best hope for surviving the century, but I put our odds of surviving it at no more than around 60%.

Re:Precedent

[gurps_npc]

If someone at the Philippines bank facilitated a theft from the Bangladesh bank, then the Bangladesh people can and SHOULD sue the Philippine bank.

Even if some people at the Bangladesh bank also facilitated the theft.

If your neighbor's son helps your son steal from you, damn right you would want your neighbor to at least partially reimburse you for the damage.

Even if you are talking 10%, that's a lot of money.

Re:

[gurps_npc]

Nope, he is DEFINITELY liable. Of course, I meant that the son was underage (Your neighbor is not liable if the son was 40 years old).

The only question is how much he is liable. Consider a case where two ten year old boys steal one of their father's cars and crash it. If the one who was driving was not the son of the owner, I assure you the insurance company will go after the father that did not own the car. Even if the other boy stole the keys, the one that was driving will have to pay. (or rather hi

It was an inside job.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Bangaladesh is suing Phillipines banks for purely political cover and to white wash the affair.

It was pulled off with insiders in the bank. They knew the exact process. Orders and acknowledgements were printed and kept track of. They first disabled the printer with some innocuous manner. It is possible they caused the same failure a few times before to stop them from getting suspicious. Then on a Friday, sent the money transfer orders. Acknowledgement was stuck in the print spool. NY Fed released the funds

Re:

[yaznaz]

Is your claim just your personal opinion or backed by some investigation. The fact that a malware was used and FBI suspects North Korea would point to outsiders in this heist. The money was laundered via banks in Philippines - a country that has had formal ties with North Korea in past and is a familiar ground for NK operatives. And hiding laundering trace via junked operators is not an obvious strategy for a banker and reflects prior experience in such operations. I would also doubt any internal hand clev

Re:

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Is your claim just your personal opinion or backed by some investigation.

ALL my claims are personal opinion. Sometimes it will be based on some trustworthy news source. Other times not.

Re:

[stephanruby]

Maybe Bangladesh is just trying to recover its money.

After all, even if they arrest the officers of the bank, give them a trial, convict them, etc., it's possible that they may never be able to recover the full amount. It's likely that there were other partners involved in receiving the money.

Re:Why is this an issue

[FeelGood314]

SWIFT is the accounting mechanism used by the banks between each other. The banks don't have physical currency that they move between each other it is all 1s and 0s like a crypto currency. When you do personal banking the receiving bank gets the 1s and 0s almost instantly and based on the nature of the transaction they have rules to stop the recipient from moving the money but as far as SWIFT is concerned the transaction can't be reversed. Now this type of transaction is extremely common for SWIFT and other than some one in Germany noticing* that the word "foundation" was miss spelled there was no reason for the transaction to be suspicious or even to be scrutinized. There might be some rules for the Philippines bank to stop the transfer to a casino but that's not something I would put a lot of faith in.

*I suspect that some group within SWIFT knew the Bangladesh's central bank had terrible security and were looking at all transactions above a certain amount without telling the Bangladesh's central bank. It's just too lucky that someone just happened to notice something fishy. Central banks move hundreds of millions regularly to stabilize currency or to facilitate large state transactions. Their wasn't anything suspicious about these.

Why is North Korea suddenly popular to blame

[FeelGood314]

Suddenly North Korea is getting a lot of blame for these cyber crimes. I'm seeing a lot of headlines but almost no citations of actual evidence. I'm currently lacking a new source that I don't treat with a high degree of skepticism and articles like this don't help. The internet should make reporters lives easier but instead it makes it easier for me to fact check reporters. My fact checking is a biased sampling, I'll usually only check articles that are a "little off" but I would say nearly 90% of the time I check the reporter has gotten something significant wrong or missed something that is not only important but is also counter to the opinion the reporter was pushing. I'll pay for good news. I won't pay for someone to just echo back my opinions. That's what facebook is for.