Bangladesh Bank Reserve Heist। Studio SK

Bangladesh Bank Reserve Heist.
The BBC has published an investigative report detailing how in 2016, North Korean hackers planned a $1 billion raid on Bangladesh’s national bank and almost succeeded. Here’s how it happened.

The Bangladesh Bank robbery: How the heist happened

The BBC investigation says that the attack happened between February 4-7, 2016. The timing was carefully planned to take advantage of the time difference between Dhaka and New York City, and working hours in both cities, with also a weekend on different days falling on the date of the heist.
The hackers, whom American investigative agencies believe are linked to North Korea, used fraudulent orders on the SWIFT payments system to steal US$951 million, which was almost all the money in that account, from Bangladesh’s central bank account. The hackers used a Federal Reserve Bank account in New York and successfully managed to steal $81 million that was transferred to accounts at Manila-based Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation.

So how did the hackers actually infiltrate Bangladesh Bank’s systems?

The BBC reports points to an ordinary office printer located inside a “highly secure room on the 10th floor of the bank’s main office in Dhaka” that was reportedly malfunctioning. This printer was specifically used to print transaction records of the bank worth millions of dollars. On February 5, 2016, bank staff found that the printer wasn’t working but had assumed it was a technical glitch, one that occurred fairly often.
The BBC report says that investigations later revealed that this malfunctioning printer was the first indication that the hackers had broken into Bangladesh Bank’s computer systems to steal US$1 billion. “When the bank’s staff rebooted the printer, they got some very worrying news. Spilling out of it were urgent messages from the Federal Reserve Bank in New York – the “Fed” – where Bangladesh keeps a US-dollar account. The Fed had received instructions, apparently from Bangladesh Bank, to drain the entire account – close to a billion dollars,” the BBC report says.

The bank staff immediately tried contacting the Federal Reserve Bank in New York for more information but couldn’t get through. That was because by the time the hackers had started their work on February 4 around 20:00 hours Bangladesh time, it was morning in New York City. The next day, February 5, was a Friday, the report says, the start of the weekend in Bangladesh, when Bangladesh Bank’s headquarters in Dhaka is officially closed. By the time the hack was discovered in Dhaka.

this week, the BBC published an investigative report detailing how in 2016, North Korean hackers planned a $1 billion raid on Bangladesh’s national bank and almost entirely succeeded. The cyber heist that came to be known as the Bangladesh Bank robbery, showed how hackers navigated the global banking system, using administrative loopholes to execute a well-planned attack to transfer millions of dollars. It was one of the world’s biggest cyberheists.

The Bangladesh Bank robbery: How the heist happened

The hackers, whom American investigative agencies believe are linked to North Korea, used fraudulent orders on the SWIFT payments system to steal US$951 million, which was almost all the money in that account, from Bangladesh’s central bank account. The hackers used a Federal Reserve Bank account in New York and successfully managed to steal $81 million that was transferred to accounts at Manila-based Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation.

So how did the hackers actually infiltrate Bangladesh Bank’s systems?