Now It’s Three: Ecuador Bank Hacked via Swift

If you’d worry more about the health of your industry and all the consumers your industry serves instead of worrying just about your reputation and fallout, we might not be dealing with as many breaches. Share information, people!

Devlin Barrett and Katy Burne report:

A little-noticed lawsuit details a hacking attack similar to one that stole $81 million from Bangladesh’s central bank, saying cybercriminals stole about $9 million last year from a bank in Ecuador. The case suggests global bankers haven’t been sharing critical information to prevent such heists.

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A third attack, from December 2015 at a commercial bank in Vietnam, was detailed last week by the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or Swift. That bank detected the fraudulent requests and stopped the movement of funds, the central bank in Vietnam said.

In the January 2015 Ecuador hack, as with the Bangladesh case, hackers managed to get the bank’s codes for using Swift, the global bank messaging service, to procure funds from another bank, according to court papers.