In one of the largest known bank heists in history, hackers breached Bangladesh Bank’s online systems and managed to steal a staggering $80m at some point between 4 and 5 February this year. The criminals then contacted the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to move money from Bangladesh Bank’s New York bank account to branches in the Philippines and Sri Lanka.
Thankfully, a tiny typo stopped them from getting away with a further $850m. Four requests transferring a total of $81m had gone through smoothly. But on their fifth request, hackers spelled the name of the NGO, Shalika Foundation, as Shalika “fandation”.
This led to the routing bank, Deutsche Bank, contacting the Bangladesh central bank for confirmation of the transaction. Duly alerted, suspicious transactions totalling over $850m were cancelled. Still think spelling doesn’t matter?
Our thanks to London Loves Business for bringing this remarkable story to our attention.
