When hackers took world banking for a ride

New York

TENS of millions of dollars siphoned from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. A shadowy set of casinos in the Philippines. A large bank in Bangladesh with creaky technology. An unknown - and perhaps uncatchable - group of anonymous thieves with sophisticated hacking skills.

What unites this curious cast of characters and enabled one of the most brazen digital bank heists ever is a ubiquitous and highly trusted international bank messaging system called Swift.