US federal prosecutors are investigating North Korea’s possible role in the theft of US$81 million from the central bank of Bangladesh in what security officials fear could be a new front in cyberwarfare.
The US attorney’s office in Los Angeles has been examining the extent to which the North Korean government aided and abetted the bold heist in February last year, according to a person briefed on the investigation who was not authorized to speak publicly.
In the theft, the attackers, using a global payment messaging system known as SWIFT, were able to persuade the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to move money from the Bangladeshi bank to accounts in the Philippines.
The SWIFT system is used by about 11,000 banks and companies to transfer money from one country to another.
In the months that followed the Bangladesh heist, it was disclosed that cyberthieves had also attacked banks in Vietnam and Ecuador using SWIFT.
North Korea’s involvement in the attack on the Bangladeshi bank had not been publicly known until the New York Times in May last year reported that security researchers had found evidence that pointed to the country.
The researchers discovered that a rare piece of code used in the theft had also been used in the hacking attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc in December 2014.
US federal prosecutors in Los Angeles are also investigating the Sony breach and what they uncovered in that inquiry led them to examine the bank theft.
US security officials have largely been quiet about whether North Korea was linked to the bank attacks, even as they have publicly attributed the Sony breach to Pyongyang.
However, that reticence is slipping.
On Tuesday, US National Security Agency Deputy Director Richard Ledgett said that the research tied the two attacks “forensically,” adding that if North Korea’s role in the bank robbery was confirmed, it would represent a troubling new front in cyberwarfare.
“That is a big deal,” Ledgett said at an event sponsored by the Aspen Institute.
John Carlin, the head of the Aspen Institute’s cybersecurity and technology program, who served as assistant attorney general for national security during the administration of former US president Barack Obama, asked whether Ledgett believed that “nation-states are now robbing banks.”
Ledgett responded: “I do.”
The breach of the Bangladeshi central bank exposed how banks of all sizes are vulnerable to cyberattacks using the SWIFT network, once thought to be among the most secure messaging systems in the world.
Large companies and banks might be fundamentally outmatched by nation-state cyberattackers, Ledgett said, adding that the US government needed to do more to help bolster their defenses.
It is as if the “security guards at Home Depot and Target” are expected “to stand up to the North Korean army,” said Ledgett, who plans to retire soon from the agency. “On the face of it, it doesn’t make sense.”
News of the criminal investigation into North Korea’s role in the Bangladeshi bank attack was reported earlier on Wednesday by the Wall Street Journal.
It was not clear whether any charges from the investigation were imminent.
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