VietNamNet Bridge - Tien Phong Commercial Joint Stock Bank’s SWIFT money-transfer system (TPBank) was recently attacked by hackers, using similar techniques in the case occurring at the Bank of Bangladesh.
According to Reuters, in the fourth quarter 2015, TPBank identified a number of suspicious requests through the messages of the SWIFT money transfer system to transfer more than 1 million euros (about 1.1 million US dollars).
The bank immediately contacted the relevant parties and promptly stopped the transfer of the money order.
"The attack did not cause any damage and did not affect the SWIFT system in particular and the transaction system between TPBank and clients in general," said the statement by the Bank.
Hackers used the infrastructure of third party that was hired by TPBank to connect them to the SWIFT system with overseas-based servers.
However, the Bank refused to provide information about the service provider, although the bank said it had terminated the contract and switched to the new system with greater security, which allows them to connect directly with SWIFT.
Recently, SWIFT said that perhaps hackers installed malware on an application software of the partner for the SWIFT payment service that they provided.
On May 12 this agency said a Vietnamese bank was in sight of the criminal group who robbed $80 million of the Central Bank of Bangladesh.
It is unclear when SWIFT identified the attacks to TPBank and whether the organization has any action to prevent similar attacks or warn other customers.
In February 2016, hackers tried to break into computer systems to steal $101 million from the Central Bank of Bangladesh's account at the Federal Reserve of New York through the use of fraudulent money transfer messages on SWIFT system. This is considered one of the major high-tech robberies in the history of the banking industry.
Accordingly, only $20 million was recovered for the Central Bank of Bangladesh while more than $80 million related to the individuals and organizations are still being investigated.
The State Bank of Vietnam is investigating the attacks by hackers to TPBank after receiving detailed information on May 16, according to Bloomberg.
According to this news agency, in a phone interview, Ms. Le Thi Thuy Sen from the SBV’s communications division said the central bank had directed the IT department to carry out the investigation on the attacks to TPBank.
Na Son