Viswanathan K's Thoughts

As the DarkNet Diary podcast explained, $81 million dollar had been stolen from the Bangladesh Bank. But how do you cash out that much money? If you just keep transferring it electronically across banks, it leaves a trail. The thieves had planned that out too.   They emptied the accounts in the Philippines almost immediately (almost certainly, someone in Philippines was in on the crime). The money was then taken to casinos in the region, where it was converted into chips. But if you gamble with that much but don’t play for long, it draws attention. The thieves chose a game where one doesn’t lose much, around 10% on average (They were willing to write off the 10% as the cost of doing “business”). Having played long enough to avoid suspicion, they cashed back their chips and walked away. But it’s still a lot of cash. The money trail of subsequent investigations led to Macao, China. But after that, the trail just vanishes.   This seemed to be an exceptionally sophistica...

The joke above reminded me of the Bangladesh Bank heist which was described in this excellent DarkNet Diary podcast . We’ve heard of million-dollar heists in so many Hollywood movies. That’s a lot, but when you go for digital robbery, the sky’s the limit. The amount they tried to rob from the Bangladesh Bank? A billion dollars. No typos, that’s indeed a billion dollars.   You’d rightly be asking the question the podcast asks: “Who would have a billion dollars lying around for someone to grab?” National banks, that’s who (the equivalents of RBI). That’s why the hackers picked the Bangladesh Bank as their target: “The plan was to hack into the Bangladesh Bank and transfer out as much money as they could before anyone could catch them.”   How did they get into the bank’s network? Good old phishing mails (yes, the ones we are warned not to click on) got them in. From that one computer, the hackers hopped around the bank’s network, familiarizing themselves with detai...