![]() By the time Bangladesh Bank comes back on line, the Federal Reserve Bank is off. On Friday, New York is working, and Bangladesh Bank is off. “So you see the elegance of the attack,” says Rakesh Asthana, US-based cyber-security expert, “The date of Thursday night has a very defined purpose. Here’s the kicker: Friday is the start of the Bangladeshi weekend, so the bank’s HQ was beginning their break, and when they began to uncover the theft on Saturday, it was already the weekend in New York. The hack started at around 20:00 Bangladesh time on Thursday, but in New York, it was Thursday morning, so the Fed had plenty of time to unknowingly carry out the hackers’ plan while Bangladesh was asleep. This was the next phase of the plan: Bangladesh Bank tried to contact the Fed for clarification but due to the precise timing of the hack, they couldn’t get through. The Fed had received instructions, reportedly from Bangladesh Bank, to drain the entire account: a whopping $951 million. When the bank’s staff rebooted the printer, they were prompted by urgent messages from the Federal Reserve Bank in New York - the Fed - where Bangladesh Bank keeps a US-dollar account. The North Korean hackers are known as the Lazarus Group, referencing the biblical figure who came back from the dead as an allusion to the resilience of the group’s computer viruses. The gang, traced back to North Korea, would use fake bank accounts, charities, casinos, and an array of accomplices to try to launder the money without suspicion.Īccording to the FBI, the Bangladesh Bank hack was the product of years of methodical preparation by an ominous team of hackers and middlemen across Asia supported by the North Korean regime. Hackers had broken into its computer networks and, Friday morning, they were attempting one of the boldest cyber-attacks ever: to steal one billion dollars. On Friday, February 5, 2016, duty manager Zubair Bin Huda later told police, “we assumed it was a common problem just like any other day … such glitches had happened before.”īut this printer was the first sign that Bangladesh Bank had been compromised. The printer wasn’t just any printer it was located on the 10th floor of the bank’s main office in Dhaka and its role was to print out records of the multi-million-dollar transfers flowing in and out of the bank. The story begins with a malfunctioning printer at Bangladesh Bank, the country’s central bank, responsible for overseeing Bangladesh’s currency reserves. So how did North Korea, one of the world’s poorest and most isolated countries, train a team of elite cyber-criminals, and how did they almost get away with it? ![]() The North Korean hackers are known as the Lazarus Group, referencing the biblical figure who came back from the dead as an allusion to the resilience of the group’s computer virusesĪ recent 10-episode podcast by Geoff White and Jean H Lee on BBC Sounds overviewed the 2016 movie-like escapade, where North Korea planned a $1 billion raid on Bangladesh’s national bank - only to be stopped by sheer coincidence. ![]()
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