Reuters report on attacks on SWIFT

(SWIFT handles transfer between banks)

Client banks been have been hit with a "meaningful" number of attacks - about a fifth of them resulting in stolen funds, said Stephen Gilderdale, Head of SWIFT's Customer Security Programme.

(from a SWIFT letter obtained by Reuters)

  • "We unfortunately continue to see cases in which some of our customers' environments are being compromised" by thieves who then send fraudulent payment instructions through the SWIFT network
  • SWIFT's Gilderdale ... Asked how many heists had been attempted, he said only that it was "a meaningful number of cases."The intrusions had been detected in a variety of ways, Gilderdale said. In some cases, anti-virus software had identified malware. In one case, a financial supervisory body had notified SWIFT of an attempted attack.

The Reuters report is here