North Korea Linked to the SWIFT Bank Hacks (bloomberg.com)

North Korea could be behind the recent string of digital attacks on Asian banks, says Symantec. The cyber security firms notes that the attacks could be traced as far back as October 2015, two months prior to the earliest known incident. As you may recall, hackers stole around $80M from Bangladesh's central bank in March, and a similar attack was seen at a Vietnamese bank earlier this month. Symantec says that it has found evidence that distinctive malware that was used in both the hacks had strong commonalities with the 2014 Sony Picture breaches. Security firm FireEye also investigated the matter. From a Bloomberg report: Investigators are examining possible computer breaches at as many as 12 banks linked to Swift's global payments network that have irregularities similar to those in the theft of $81 million from the Bangladesh central bank, according to a person familiar with the probe. FireEye, the security firm hired by the Bangladesh bank, has been contacted by the other banks, most of which are in Southeast Asia, because of signs that hackers may have breached their networks, the person said. They include banks in the Philippines and New Zealand but not in Western Europe or the United States. There is no indication of whether money was taken.

Comments

Re:Roll back?

[Anonymous Coward]

Rolling back is no possible because it would collapse the international payment system. The bank that received the funds would not be very happy if the transaction was rolled back while the criminals have already moved the money too yet other banks and accounts, or converted it into untraceable assets like cash, golds, diamants, etc.
If that were possible, receiving banks would freeze ALL incoming funds until they received the 'final clearance'. How long should they wait for that ? what form should this final clearance take ? would it help against this kind of fraud ? unlikely.
It would only bring the worlds complete payment networks to a grinding halt, destroying the world economy the moment this was made possible.