Bangladesh heist could have been prevented
Proactive privileged account controls and advanced detection capabilities would have foiled the cyber crooks.
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ON May 15, 2015, three bank accounts were opened at the Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC) in the Philippines. Each of these accounts was to lie dormant until Feb 4 the following year. The authorities were to find out only later that the accounts were fake, and linked to an attempt by the cyber criminals to steal nearly US$1 billion from the Bangladesh Central Bank.
The heist had been in the planning for nearly a year, but thanks in large part to a spelling error that raised alarm bells, the attackers made off with only US$81 million.
To understand how this attack occurred, it is first necessary to understand the role of Swift in monetary transactions between financial institutions, including central banks.
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