Bangladesh Reopens 2013 Cold Case Of Bank Theft Via SWIFT

Bangladesh police have pulled up an unsolved 2013 bank theft involving the SWIFT network for fresh review in relation to the February $81 million Bangladesh Bank heist, reports Reuters in an exclusive news story. The case involves fraudulent messages via the SWIFT network, through which hackers transferred $250,000 from Sonali Bank to recipients in Turkey.

Reuters quotes a Sonali Bank official as saying cybercriminals gained passwords to other systems by setting up key-logger software on a computer and sending transfer messages over SWIFT. This is the fourth recorded case of an attack on a bank via the SWIFT network, the other two being Ecuador’s Banco del Austro and Vietnam’s Tien Phong Bank, according to Reuters.

While Bangladesh has renewed its probe into the Sonali Bank case hoping to get links to the central bank heist, SWIFT is also “actively looking into other possible instances of fraud”.

For details on this story, go to Reuters.