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Security Researcher Goes Missing After Investigating Bangladesh Bank Cyber-Heist (softpedia.com)

Posted by timothy on from the doesn't-sound-promising dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Tanvir Hassan Zoha, 34, security researcher, has gone missing just days after accusing Bangladesh's central bank officials of negligence, which facilitated the theft of over $81 million from the country's oversea accounts (hackers tried to steal $1 billion, but a typo stopped them). Zoha was apparently kidnapped this Wednesday after a jeep pulled over in front of his rickshaw. The friend that was with him was released hours later unharmed. When trying to contact police, family members were re-routed between police stations, and eventually gave up, contacting the media.

60 comments

  1. Extraordinary rendition by Enter+the+Shoggoth · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Many of us in the west will instinctively think of this as a developing world scenario but really how different is it to the way things are heading in the developed world?

    --
    Andy Warhol got it right / Everybody gets the limelight
    Andy Warhol got it wrong / Fifteen minutes is too long.
    1. Re:Extraordinary rendition by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      He would be charged with something and eventually put in prison or released. Developing countries tend to just shoot political prisoners.

    2. Re:Extraordinary rendition by Falconhell · · Score: 3, Informative

      Heading? we have been there for years.
      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...

    3. Re:Extraordinary rendition by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The Decline of the West

    4. Re:Extraordinary rendition by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yeah, that's the difference between the weaponized bureaucracy of the US and developing nations.

      - both have a central government that breaks its own laws when it suits them
      - both have punitive legal systems that destroy the lives of people in the lower classes regardless of guilt
      - both have law enforcement that view citizens as fodder to beat, shoot and incarcerate with no oversight

      - one shoots people it finds to be a problem, the other makes them disappear into a prison for decades

      The US government is essentially a violent third world dictatorship with a hastily applied veneer of lawfulness and access to eye-watering amounts of resources and manpower.

    5. Re: Extraordinary rendition by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Exactly. This is just Republicans being Republucans.

    6. Re: Extraordinary rendition by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's how they be.

    7. Re: Extraordinary rendition by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They want all opposition to disappear.

    8. Re: Extraordinary rendition by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, it is the way of their kind.

    9. Re: Extraordinary rendition by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They have made so many of my friends disappear. Disappear.

    10. Re: Extraordinary rendition by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They're making Sanders disappear. I haven't seen him on our Republican-controlled mass media in weeks.

    11. Re: Extraordinary rendition by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's sad how they be now.

    12. Re: Extraordinary rendition by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well it's all Trump now. The media has already declared the election for him.

    13. Re:Extraordinary rendition by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      He would be charged with something and eventually put in prison or released. Developing countries tend to just shoot political prisoners.

      For now. Give it a couple of years and they'll just shoot them on sight as there will be too many to incarcerate.

    14. Re: Extraordinary rendition by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Care to expand on how a book published in 1918 applies to TFA?

    15. Re: Extraordinary rendition by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As spoken by a typical Democrat.

    16. Re:Extraordinary rendition by Opportunist · · Score: 2

      Please. We're far too civilized for this.

      Why do you think we have that ridiculous amount of laws nobody could possibly heed? You go arrest him, I'll grab the book and find something we can tack to him that sticks.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    17. Re:Extraordinary rendition by Therefore+I+am · · Score: 1

      One wood chipper pass and then fed to chickens.

      Untraceable.

    18. Re:Extraordinary rendition by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      but really how different is it to the way things are heading in the developed world?

      Very different. Security researchers in the developed world are never kidnapped from their rickshaws.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    19. Re:Extraordinary rendition by dev-in-seattle · · Score: 0

      The difference is you can find someone in the US. They might try to charge them with bogus charges, but the us doesn't kill people in the night. That's a pretty big difference.

    20. Re: Extraordinary rendition by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Remember the death of Ian Murdock - creator of Debian Linux and a leading citizen of the Free Software movement - murdered Christmas 2015 by the notorious San Francisco Police Department.

    21. Re:Extraordinary rendition by davester666 · · Score: 1

      Except the President believes he has the right to, at his sole discretion, decide a given individual is bad, and can lawfully order that person to be apprehended, then removed from the US, and held without charges, a trial or any notice to anyone that it has occurred, indefinitely.

      --
      Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
    22. Re:Extraordinary rendition by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Are you quite sure about that?

    23. Re:Extraordinary rendition by Coren22 · · Score: 1

      So you assert that he was assassinated rather than committed suicide? What evidence do you have to add to the investigation that was somehow missed?

      --
      APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
    24. Re:Extraordinary rendition by dev-in-seattle · · Score: 0

      Except the President believes he has the right to, at his sole discretion, decide a given individual is bad, and can lawfully order that person to be apprehended, then removed from the US, and held without charges, a trial or any notice to anyone that it has occurred, indefinitely.

      Has Obama or even Bush kidnapped someone from the US and done this? What they have done is bad enough, snatch people off the street outside the us and do this.

    25. Re:Extraordinary rendition by davester666 · · Score: 1

      How would you know if he's done this? He doesn't have to tell anyone it has happened.

      This isn't some bizarre conspiracy, he has publicly come out and said he believe that he can do it legally.

      It would take someone like another Snowden, willing to give up the rest of their life in exchange for disclosing secrets the US gov't wishes us to not know.

      --
      Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
  2. Not very secure by freeze128 · · Score: 1

    You would think that a security researcher would travel in a more secure way than by rickshaw.

    1. Re:Not very secure by whoever57 · · Score: 3, Informative

      You would think that a security researcher would travel in a more secure way than by rickshaw.

      You haven't been to India have you?

      It was an auto-rickshaw, known elsewhere as a tuk-tuk.

      --
      The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
    2. Re:Not very secure by radicimo · · Score: 3, Informative

      To be precise, it was a "CNG auto-rickshaw" ... doubt he felt he was in any danger until the moment they whisked him off. From the run-around his family got by the local constabulary, it sounds as if the local police are part of the rendition, if no more than serving as an obstruction for someone else.

      --
      100 REM PISS OFF CODE FASCISTS 200 GOTO 100
    3. Re:Not very secure by tlambert · · Score: 1

      Oh. That's very different. The bamboo the passenger compartment is made of is bulletproof, right?

    4. Re:Not very secure by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We need self-driving rickshaws!

    5. Re:Not very secure by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Flying rickshaws!

    6. Re:Not very secure by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This isn't India, this is Bangladesh.

    7. Re:Not very secure by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So, just the similarly developing neighboring country that ALSO broke away from British India?

  3. Billion with a B by radicimo · · Score: 2

    Has to be the largest single heist attempt ever, though perhaps pales to the systemic pillaging that Kaspersky mentioned last year. ... and they would have gotten away with it too if it wasn't for those meddling keys.

    --
    100 REM PISS OFF CODE FASCISTS 200 GOTO 100
    1. Re:Billion with a B by phantomfive · · Score: 2

      Has to be the largest single heist attempt ever,

      The Russian oligarchs have stolen billions from Gazprom and other parts of the country.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    2. Re:Billion with a B by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      But that was rich people doing it. Rich people don't steal.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  4. Filthy Muslim third world shithole by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    What else do you expect ?

    It was an inside job. The attackers didn't just get lucky and "compromise" the banking system.

    A bunch of the local moslems acted true to type and decided to steal what little money the vast majority of their countrymen and woman had, as they toil in the dirt and shit all day.

    Also acting true to type they fucked it up.

    Now they don't want any questions being asked.

    It's just run-of-the-mill dirty moslem shitskin corruption.

    Move along, nothing to see here.

    1. Re:Filthy Muslim third world shithole by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think they're Hindu in Banlgadesh... but go ahead...spew your hate, a-hole

    2. Re:Filthy Muslim third world shithole by RabidReindeer · · Score: 5, Interesting

      No, When India gained independence, 2 provinces split off because they were Muslim-majority and didn't want to be under the control of the Hindu majority.

      West Pakistan became simply Pakistan. East Pakistan became Bangladesh. It is a Muslim country, and it's one of the most corrupt nations in the world, but that's not because it's a muslim nation. It's because the wage scales and living conditions are at the level that the West is still trying to force its own workers to. It's a true capitalist's paradise, with minimal regulation which can be greased aside if you have enough capital and everyone is constantly looking for new and creative ways to be "entrepreneurial" without much respect for whether they're doing in in a legal manner or not.

    3. Re: Filthy Muslim third world shithole by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

      You must be a socialist and a big Bernie supporter.

    4. Re:Filthy Muslim third world shithole by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're pretty fucking dumb, aren't you ?.....peasant.

    5. Re:Filthy Muslim third world shithole by khallow · · Score: 2

      No, When India gained independence, 2 provinces split off because they were Muslim-majority and didn't want to be under the control of the Hindu majority.

      West Pakistan became simply Pakistan. East Pakistan became Bangladesh.

      Way wrong. Pakistan and India were created at the same time in 1947. East Bangladesh became independent from the rest of Pakistan in 1971 after a nasty genocide and war, supported by India.

      It's because the wage scales and living conditions are at the level that the West is still trying to force its own workers to. It's a true capitalist's paradise, with minimal regulation which can be greased aside if you have enough capital and everyone is constantly looking for new and creative ways to be "entrepreneurial" without much respect for whether they're doing in in a legal manner or not.

      Welcome to Poverty 101. Poor people aren't worth much. This means among other things, that anything more than "minimal regulation" kills people through starvation. You can complain about the lower regulations of Bangladesh, but a serious attempt to implement developed world regulation on Bangladesh would destroy the country's economy and many of its people.

      And once again, I see an idiot ignoring labor competition. If you're competing with workers who can do your job for a fraction of the cost, you will see a decline in wages whether someone tries to "force" you or not.

    6. Re:Filthy Muslim third world shithole by RabidReindeer · · Score: 1

      Idiot yourself.

      In the first case, you're simply reiterating what I already said.

      In the second, you seem to be justify low wages and bad working conditions because it makes them competitive with a place that provides low wages and bad working conditions. It's called Bangladesh.

    7. Re: Filthy Muslim third world shithole by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And you are likely a trump supporter and therefore a nazi.

    8. Re: Filthy Muslim third world shithole by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > Implying Hitler did anything wrong.

    9. Re:Filthy Muslim third world shithole by khallow · · Score: 1
      Would it be too much for you to read my post? I still stand by my words.

      Pakistan didn't split off from India. It never was part of India and actually came into being the day before India did. Nor was it "two provinces", but parts of several provinces (Baluchistan, Bengal, Punjab, Sindh, Northwest Frontier) and a number of "princely states". Nor did East Pakistan just "become" Bangladesh. It took a quarter century and winning a significant civil war.

      In the second, you seem to be justify low wages and bad working conditions because it makes them competitive with a place that provides low wages and bad working conditions. It's called Bangladesh.

      And you need to work on your perception. I'll just note that like many important real world things, pretending labor competition doesn't exist, doesn't actually make it go away.

    10. Re:Filthy Muslim third world shithole by Maow · · Score: 1

      This AC could get a job at an IMAX theatre -- the projection is strong in this one.

    11. Re: Filthy Muslim third world shithole by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      -1 unpleasant truth

    12. Re:Filthy Muslim third world shithole by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Comparative advantage, and economic globalization. Google them.

    13. Re:Filthy Muslim third world shithole by khallow · · Score: 1

      And Jevons paradox - which explains why human labor is desired more than ever, due to its increased productivity.

    14. Re: Filthy Muslim third world shithole by Coren22 · · Score: 1

      Hitler was far closer to Sanders than Trump. They may sound alike, but Trump is not a fascist.

      --
      APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
  5. How to get the security researcher released by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    Threaten to contaminate the entire country's water supply with pig blood if the security researcher isn't released within three hours. The kidnappers will believe they're going to hell if they don't free the researcher. I'll bet the public is a lot more willing to provide tips as to what happened and the situation is quickly resolved. I'd bet the Middle East would get along a lot better after a few nuclear strikes from the US military against Syria, Iraq, Israel, and Iran. Put a payload of pig blood on each nuclear weapon and you'll see the Jews and Muslims suddenly start getting along. Problem solved!

  6. Corruption by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Corruption is the misguided belief of the people in power that they are going to live forever. Organized resistance with sniper rifles is the way to re-educate them of the realities of this world. Oh wait, the kidnappers were the security officials.

  7. Truth by is7s · · Score: 1

    To be honest, it's a third-world country... what did you expect

  8. Lemme get this straight... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So they get you train your H1B replacement. Then they start sending your pay cheque to India. Knock over the bank in India to get the money back. Profit.

  9. I can't be the only one thinking this by Dunbal · · Score: 1

    He was in on it?

    --
    Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
  10. All i can say is by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Holly fucking shit.... when is the movie coming out?

  11. The NY fed said they have no responsibility by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yes we were holding your 100's of millions that were stolen but, it's not our responsibility

  12. money by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I bet the researcher got some of that money.