Inquiry into Bangladesh hack details missteps by staff at central bank

Dhaka

MOST days, Mizanur Rahman Bhuiyan would arrive at the Bangladesh central bank's accounts department to find a stack of printed money transfer confirmations. On the first Friday of February, he found an empty printer tray.

Printer problems were so routine that Mr Bhuiyan and other bank employees did not check their Swift bank messaging terminal for the day's money transfer reports. Had they looked, they might have noticed a red flag: No transactions had been recorded overnight, because hackers had deleted the logs just hours earlier in a bid to steal US$1 billion.