the bank was shutting down for the weekend,
which in Muslim-majority countries like Bangladesh, tends to be on a Friday
and Saturday, instead of a Saturday and Sunday. The intruders once again entered
the system. But it was for the last time, because this was what it was all
leading to. Now, they were in the system, but manipulating international money
transfers was a whole nother thing. SWIFT, you may have heard, is a global
payment network enabling financial transactions to be sent in a secure and
reliable way, using military grade security designed to be unbreachable.
Just to be clear, SWIFT does not facilitate the transfer of actual funds,
but rather it sends the trusted payment orders between accounts, which
the banks then act on. This is the standard in international banking. And,
this is partly why bank hackers usually focus on stealing the login credentials
of individual bank account holders, rather than focusing on the banks themselves.
But, it wasn't the case here, not for this group. Their target was the institution.
Using the bank's legitimate SWIFT credentials that they collected from the malware,
they were able to take control of the SWIFT terminals, as if they were legitimate
bank employees. Yes, SWIFT itself is safe and secure, but the banks using them
first needed to be responsible for their individual cyber security, on their end.
If their security happened to be lacking, as in the case with many developing
nations, SWIFT could actually be used against them. And, that's what was happening here.