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How Hackers Stole $100M from the New York Fed

zerohedge.com

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Re: How Hackers Stole $100M from the New York Fed

#31

Post by CPLX »

Someone1234 wrote: post #10
gjem97 wrote: post #3

Misleading headline, given the first line of the piece is "The story of the theft of $100 million from the Bangladesh central bank"

Yeah the article's title is true but misleading. They hacked the Bangladesh Central Bank, but stole money from the New York Fed. It is even debatable if the NY Fed is even at fault given that the hackers had legitimate credentials to make the transfer (the Bangladeshis are arguing that the NY Fed is still responsible because they should have flagged the Casinos as unusual and stopped it). You'd think that with accoun…

In the context of the New York Fed transactions of tens of millions of dollars, as in this example, are essentially tiny.

Re: How Hackers Stole $100M from the New York Fed

#32

Post by jonknee »

imaginenore wrote: post #21
an_account wrote: post #2

If the funds were sent to casinos, shouldn't the casinos have logs of what the money was used for?

That part of the story makes the least sense. So casino gets $100M. Then what? If the casino isn't involved in the scheme, how can a thief take that $100M, using chips or not?

Convert money to chips, cycle chips around, convert chips to cash. It's a really common money laundering technique, though not usually at this scale.

Re: How Hackers Stole $100M from the New York Fed

#33

Post by tim333 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #18

I tried corroborating the claim that the hackers were Chinese. Couldn't find a reliable source. Anyone have anything? For future reference, Zero Hedge is a low-quality source.

The Chinese hackers thing seems dubious. From another article:

"""

Security experts said that to pull off the attack, cyber criminals had to first gather information about Bangladesh Bank's procedures for ordering transfers, so that the fraudulent requests would not raise red flags.

In addition to stealing credentials for processing transfers, the hackers likely spied on Bangladesh Bank staff to get a deep understanding of the central bank's operations, according to experts in banking fraud.

Kayvan Alikhani, a senior director with security firm RSA, said that in addition to user names and passwords for accessing SWIFT, the hackers likely needed to obtain cryptographic keys that authenticated the senders.

"""

So maybe insiders were involved?

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fed-bangladesh-idUSKCN...

Re: How Hackers Stole $100M from the New York Fed

#35

Post by Retric »

chatmasta wrote: post #6
an_account wrote: post #2

If the funds were sent to casinos, shouldn't the casinos have logs of what the money was used for?

Have you ever been to a casino? You buy chips with cash, then you play with the chips, then you cash the (remaining) chips in for cash. There is no tracking of where each chip came from. EDIT: Although maybe you're right, if the "gamblers" deposited funds to the casino via wire, direct from the fed, and then exchanged them for chips. So the casinos should presumably have some record of who came to claim that wire in…

Depends on how much cash your throwing around. Casino's tend to track there high rollers with great precision, but if your tossing out PS: In the US the government requires casino's to track large winnings for the IRS they hand out W9's.

Re: How Hackers Stole $100M from the New York Fed

#36

Post by jackgavigan »

dang wrote: post #25
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #18

I tried corroborating the claim that the hackers were Chinese. Couldn't find a reliable source. Anyone have anything? For future reference, Zero Hedge is a low-quality source.

It's a penalized site on HN, but this article was vouched for by established users. If there's a more substantive article for this particular story, we can change the URL, but so far the only other one we saw was merely about a spelling mistake. Occasionally the low-quality source has the higher-quality article.

Reuters: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fed-bangladesh-typo-in...

Bloomberg: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-09/the-1-bill...

Re: How Hackers Stole $100M from the New York Fed

#37

Post by gotchange »

tim333 wrote: post #33
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #18

I tried corroborating the claim that the hackers were Chinese. Couldn't find a reliable source. Anyone have anything? For future reference, Zero Hedge is a low-quality source.

The Chinese hackers thing seems dubious. From another article: """ Security experts said that to pull off the attack, cyber criminals had to first gather information about Bangladesh Bank's procedures for ordering transfers, so that the fraudulent requests would not raise red flags. In addition to stealing credentials for processing transfers, the hackers likely spied on Bangladesh Bank staff to get a deep understand…

It's very likely that an insider is involved and probably the Sri Lankan money transfer has something to do with it.

Re: How Hackers Stole $100M from the New York Fed

#38

Post by Thriptic »

gjem97 wrote: post #3

Misleading headline, given the first line of the piece is "The story of the theft of $100 million from the Bangladesh central bank"

ZH hates the fed so I'm sure they're eager to imply that the fed is somehow at fault, even if doing so is a stretch. Notice all the non-value add editorial jabs at the fed sprinkled throughout the piece.

Re: How Hackers Stole $100M from the New York Fed

#39

Post by tristanj »

jackgavigan wrote: post #36
dang wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a penalized site on HN, but this article was vouched for by established users. If there's a more substantive article for this particular story, we can change the URL, but so far the only other one we saw was merely about a spelling mistake. Occasionally the low-quality source has the higher-quality article.

Reuters: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fed-bangladesh-typo-in... Bloomberg: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-09/the-1-bill...

The zerohedge article has more information than either of those articles. It uses those two as sources, plus some Philippine newspapers. Right now it gives a fairly effective summary of the situation. Switching to either of those would be a downgrade, in my opinion.

Re: How Hackers Stole $100M from the New York Fed

#40

Post by laxatives »

karmacondon wrote: post #30

I would be all for banning submissions from zerohedge.com outright. It's just noise that makes it harder for me to skim headlines for actual content.

This is probably an unpopular opinion, but I feel the same way about Vice. Its not news, its entertainment. And when you can't disambiguate the two, its fucking dangerous.
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