It has now emerged that prior to the fraudsters attacking Bangladesh Bank and a bank in Vietnam there was another incident in which Banco del Austro in Ecuador was robbed of $12 million, which was transferred by the fraudsters to accounts in Hong Kong, Dubai, New York and Los Angeles, using the same modus operandi. The January 2015 attack on the bank has been mentioned in a lawsuit filed by the bank in a New York federal court. The frauds were committed using a flaw in SWIFT messaging system. SWIFT had subsequent to the Bangladesh incident instructed clients to secure their local computer networks. SWIFT had warned customers that the two attacks against banks in Bangladesh and Vietnam appeared to be part of a wider and highly adaptive campaign. A SWIFT spokesperson said the network had not been made aware of the Banco del Austro incident. It said its network and core messaging services have not been compromised by the attacks.
