Vietnam Bank Target Of Failed Cyberattack In December

Hackers tried to unsuccessfully transfer $1.36 million from a Vietnamese bank to a Slovenian bank in December, says Reuters, quoting a top official of State Bank of Vietnam (SBV). There have been no other cyber attacks on banks in Vietnam except for this one, said Le Manh Hung who is head of IT department in SBV.

The affected bank – Tien Phong Bank (TP Bank) –detected the malicious transfer bid via bogus SWIFT messages which went “through its own reconciliation system,” said Hung, adding the Interpol representative in Vietnam was informed of the incident.

The malware was found in the network of a third-party vendor which TPBank was using to connect to SWIFT. The Slovenian bank to which the money was headed has not been identified, nor have the accounts in which the transfer was to be made.

Earlier, SWIFT had said that a commercial bank had been made the target of a malware attack but had not named the organization.

For the full story, see Reuters.