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Bangladesh Hopes To Recover $30 Million More From Cyber Heist (reuters.com)

Posted by msmash on from the give-me-my-money dept.

In February, Bangladesh's central bank was thrown under the bus after hackers stole a whopping $81 million from it. The central bank has now said it hopes to retrieve $30 million more of the stolen amount. From a report on Reuters: Hackers used stolen Bangladesh Bank credentials to try to send three dozen SWIFT messages to transfer nearly $1 billion from its Fed account. They succeeded in transferring $81 million to four accounts at Rizal Commercial Banking Corp in Manila. Most of the money was laundered through casinos in Manila. On Friday, Philippine authorities began the process of handing over $15.25 million to Bangladesh. "We are hoping to get back around $30 million which remains frozen," Bangladesh Bank deputy governor Abu Hena Mohammad Razee Hassan, who heads its financial intelligence unit, told Reuters.

16 comments

  1. What's the problem? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's all fake money, 1s and 0s. Just add back the amount that was stolen and say it wasn't.

  2. Thrown under the bus? by rahvin112 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    They weren't "thrown under the bus". They allowed their credentials to be stolen and used. The rest of the banking world isn't obligated to protect a central bank from their own lax security. Those credentials should have been guarded with the highest security possible and a full time team of personal dedicated to monitoring and protecting those credentials, like every other nation on earth.

    They want to blame everyone else for their own mistake, and just like every third world nation they pointed their fingers at the US for not stopping a transaction that was originated with the central bank's credentials. The fault was theirs and theirs alone. The system worked exactly as it should have, no other bank or country should be questioning or blocking transactions initiated by the central bank of another nation.

    1. Re:Thrown under the bus? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Indeed. Tools are out there; they are everywhere. The wise ones know how to use them; the slick ones do, too. The foolish play blamestorming games while picking up the pieces.

    2. Re: Thrown under the bus? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The system worked exactly as it should have, no other bank or country should be questioning or blocking transactions initiated by the central bank of another nation.

      To the contray, yes, they should. The same as a pawn shop should not let itself be allowed to hanlde stolen goods. Except moreso.

      I know, I know, you come from a world where responsibility is a foreign concept, but that often leads to more problems when not tempered with the idea that you should be responsible. But heck, my bank specifically advertises that they can watch for suspicious activity and stop it, so I know you,live in a world with sense.

    3. Re: Thrown under the bus? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I believe in people taking responsibility for their own actions. If countries (including Bangladesh) have the means (if the international system doesn't hinder the banks of being in control anyway) to protect themselves then it must be left up to Bangladesh to deal with its failure to secure its systems from being used improperly. I think your idea that Manila should somehow be responsible for what Bangladesh allowed to occur on its system your utterly wrong. If you don't get insurance for yourself that's your problem. The government should not steal from one person to put in place a safety net for another. Personal responsibility is taking responsibility for your own failure to do the things you should be doing and not.

    4. Re: Thrown under the bus? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Your last point contradicts your first. If your bank advertises that they can stop suspicious activity and it turns out it actually can't, then it is your bank's fault when something like that happens. Hence, if your country's Central Bank can't stop suspicious activity, and it gets robbed, it is nobody else the fucking Central Bank's fault. It is not the fault of the one receiving the funds. Hell, how would you even think validation would ever happen?

      - Hey Bob, I got an 80 million transfer from the Central Bank of Bangladesh, think they're legit?
      - Well, it is a CENTRAL BANK you idiot, how more legit can you get than that?

  3. Once again, big government crushes the little man by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    And here we see the consequences,private entrepreneurs try to liberate stolen money and put it to good use, in productive casinos and gambling dens, but big government can't stand that, so it works together to steal even more money from the people.

    If this were gold, nobody would stand for it.

  4. More than what? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "...it hopes to retrieve $30 million more..." Implying they've already recovered some of the $81 million. TFA doesn't clarify.

    1. Re:More than what? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      TFA was perfectly clear when I read it. $15M has been returned. They hope to return $30M more beyond that, for a total returned of $45M. The rest is presumably lost already to launderers.

  5. Impressive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How do you launder that much money in a casino without raising any red flags? One high stakes table probably wouldn't cut it if you wanted to remain anonymous.

    1. Re:Impressive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      How do you launder that much money in a casino without raising any red flags?

      Apparently they didn't, considering $15MM has already been returned and another $30MM has been frozen. That's more than half of the stolen money that apparently did raise red flags.

      I don't know about Manila but in Macau it's not unusual for bettors to wire in $5MM or more at a time. Of course by that point you're generally known to the property already, you'd need to stay smaller if you wanted to fly under the radar. In Macau, you could deposit $250K each at 4 different casinos, lose $50K at each, cash out the remaining $800K, repeat monthly without raising too many eyebrows. No one is suspicious of a guest playing this way one weekend a month. In under 7 years you've laundered the $81MM, and had a hell of a time in Macau.

    2. Re:Impressive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Except where does the money go in the meantime? Presumably, to do as you suggest, you would need to continually steal money from the bank multiple times with small amounts. Otherwise if you just stole all 81M at once and trickled it out to casinos, the authorities would simply seize the bank accounts trickling out the stolen money. It really had to be funneled all at once or not at all.

  6. Following up by manu0601 · · Score: 1

    While we are following up at this story, do we know what happened to the security researcher that disapeared after accusing the central bank of poor security practice?

    1. Re:Following up by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      He was found, but no mention of what happened to him during the period he was missing.

      http://news.softpedia.com/news/bangladeshi-missing-security-research-is-found-alive-returned-home-502087.shtml

      http://bdnews24.com/bangladesh/2016/03/23/law-enforcers-drop-it-expert-zoha-back-home-family-says