Bangladesh Central Bank officials are pinning the blame for an cyberattack that netted $81 million from the financial institution on the IT department at The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) for incorrectly installing some new software.
The Bangladesh bankers said vulnerabilities were introduced into the SWIFT messaging system when that organization installed the real-time gross settlement system (RTGS) software several months prior to the hack, according to a Reuters report. The story quoted Mohammad Shah Alam, who is heading the investigation for the Bangladeshi police, as saying the RTGS had loopholes that were exploited when it was connected to the SWIFT system.
SWIFT is a banking cooperative that supplies financial messaging services to its 3,000 members, while RTGS are specialist funds transfer systems that allows the transfer of money or securities from one bank to another on a "real time" and on "gross" basis.
