Some banks that are under attack have not been mentioned but the known ones are on Bangladesh, Vietnam, Philippines and Ecuador. The hackers managed to evade local security systems and in some cases stole money. Bangladesh’s central bank acquiesced $101 million while Ecuador’s bank lost $12Million. The message from SWIFT was first received from Reuters. They urged banks to protect themselves from hackers and to be aware of any kind of attack. It is said that hackers are not necessarily using sophisticated ways to attack banks but are using smarter approaches.
while the banks think that the attackers would attack in a very obvious manner the hackers have taken advantage of this naivety. The attackers had managed to install fraudulent messages in the systems but have not been able to attack SWIFT. The criminals had a pattern that was noted by SWIFT. At first the attackers would use a malware to ruin the banks local security system that way they would gain access to the SWIFT messaging network. Fraudulent messages were then sent via SWIFT to initiate cash transfers from account at larger banks.
This has been said to be one of the most serious attacks banks could possibly face. If this fraud continues, there would be a loss of control over payment channels that could paralyze a bank. So far the only information received by cyber security researchers is the hacking teams name known as ‘”Lazarus”. The suspicion so far is that the hacking team is from Korea although it is still under investigation. The realization that the global banking system is not safe does not leave Africa behind. African countries also needs to take precautions to protect their clients money and systems from any additional hackers.
