Staff Reporter :The government probe body formed to investigate the cyber-heist of Bangladesh Bank (BB) on Sunday blamed SWIFT for allowing the hackers to steal US$101 million from the bank’s reserve account maintained with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.”The global financial messaging network SWIFT is primarily responsible for the hacking of the BB’s reserve,” Dr Mohammed Farashuddin, who is heading the probe body, told reporters after a meeting at the Central Bank in the afternoon.Dr Farashuddin, also a former Central Bank governor, said malware made by either Pakistani or North Korean hackers was used in stealing the fund from BB account with NY Fed.”The malware was installed at the server of BB for stealing the money,” he added. Dr Farashuddin mentioned that SWIFT technicians installed the first real-time gross settlement (RTGS) system despite spotting malware in the BB network allowing hackers to steal US$101 million from the bank.He also said BB staff had contributed to the situation through their carelessness, callousness, irresponsibility and ignorance. Earlier, the investigators of Criminal Investigation Department (CID) also held SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) technicians responsible for the cyber-heist of BB.CID is now probing the BB’s cyber-heist case filed earlier with the Motijheel Police Station.Mohammad Shah Alam, the head of the CID’s investigation team, said the technicians introduced loopholes while connecting the real-time gross settlement (RTGS) system to Swift. “We found a lot of loopholes. The changes caused much more risk for Bangladesh Bank”, he added.
