Global fund transfer network SWIFT admitted it is aware of ‘a number of recent cyber incidents’ where attackers had sent fraudulent messages over its system. The admission came as investigations are on in Bangladesh and elsewhere into the cyber theft of $81 million from the Bangladesh Bank account at the New York Federal Reserve. SWIFT said the method involved altering SWIFT software on Bangladesh Bank’s computers to hide evidence of fraudulent transfers. This is seen as an acknowledgement by SWIFT that the Bangladesh Bank attack was not an isolated incident but one of several recent criminal schemes that aimed to take advantage of the global messaging platform used by some 11,000 financial institutions. SWIFT issued the warning in a confidential alert on its network to the members. Swift, or the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, is a cooperative owned by 3,000 financial institutions. The organization also released a security update to the Alliance Access server software that banks use to access its network to prevent malware that security researchers with British defense contractor BAE Systems said was probably used by hackers in the Bangladesh Bank heist. SWIFT said in most cases the attackers obtained valid credentials for operators authorized to create and approve SWIFT messages, then submitted fraudulent messages by impersonating those people.
