Fraudulent SWIFT Messages Target Offshore Banks - Is the Global Banking at Risk?

The methods used by hackers to attack banks in Vietnam and Bangladesh appear to have been deployed over a year ago in a heist in Ecuador. Vietnam's Tien Phong Bank said that it interrupted an attempted cyber heist that involved the use of fraudulent SWIFT messages, the same technique at the heart of February's massive theft from the Bangladesh central bank. Hanoi-based TPBank said in a statement late on Sunday in response to inquiries from Reuters that in the fourth quarter of last year it identified suspicious requests through fraudulent SWIFT messages to transfer more than 1 million euros ($1.1 million) of funds. The January 2015 attack on Banco del Austro is described in a lawsuit filed by the bank in a New York federal court. It ended with thieves transferring $12 million to accounts in Hong Kong, Dubai, New York and Los Angeles, according to court documents.The existence of the lawsuit was first reported Friday, just a just week after global banking communications network SWIFT instructed clients to secure their local computer networks. SWIFT, or the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, warned customers that two previous attacks against banks in Bangladesh and Vietnam appeared to be "part of a wider and highly adaptive campaign." Which counter-measures can the global banking system take to mitigate fraudulent SWIFT messages? Send your recommendations to the Cloud and Cyber Security Center: http://cloudandcybersecurity.blogspot.com/