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Treasury & Capital Markets
Bangladesh breach 'watershed event' for banking industry
The fraudulent transfers from the Bangladesh central bank in February have been called “a watershed event for the banking industry” by the CEO of Swift, the organization at the heart of the heist. Speaking at an event in Brussels on Tuesday, Gottfried Leibbrandt also confirmed that there were at least two other, “but possibly more”, cases of fraud through the Swift network.
Christoph Kober 25 May 2016
The fraudulent transfers from the Bangladesh central bank in February have been called “a watershed event for the banking industry” by the CEO of Swift, the organization at the heart of the heist. Speaking at an event in Brussels on Tuesday, Gottfried Leibbrandt also confirmed that there were at least two other, “but possibly more”, cases of fraud through the Swift network.
According to Swift, the bank-owned operator of the global messaging service that facilitates most interbank transactions, hackers were able to compromise credentials by the banks to access the network and initiate fraudulent payments to their accounts. They were also able to cover their tracks through sophisticated malware. A total of US$81 million was stolen from the accounts of the Bangladesh central bank.
Sergei Shevchenko, a security researcher at BAE Systems, has called the attack “one of the largest cyber heists committed” in a blog that details the elaborate methodology applied by the hackers.
In his speech Tuesday, Leibbrandt announced a five-pronged security initiative, at the center of which is an appeal to all 11,000 Swift users to share any information relevant to the security of the network. “There will be a before and an after Bangladesh,” he said. “All of us in the global financial community have to be willing to share information…Banks can learn from one another about the modus operandi [of hackers] and put better preventative measures in place…But information sharing needs to get better, much better.”
His speech was delivered on the same day as the announcement of a Cybersecurity Fortification Initiative by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA). Designed to “enhance the cyber resilience of the banking sector”, the HKMA plans to require banks in the territory to conduct regular risk assessments by trained IT specialists. 

The initiative also pursues the creation of a cyber intelligence sharing platform, to be developed jointly by the HKMA, the Hong Kong Association of Banks and the Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute (ASTRI).  The platform will serve to share intelligence on cyber-attacks and outline recommendations on how to defend against them.  All licensed banks in Hong Kong are expected to join, the HKMA says. 

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