How a hacker's typo helped stop a billion dollar bank heist

A spelling mistake in an onlinebank transfer instruction helped prevent a nearly $1 billion USheist last month involving the Bangladesh central bank and theNew York Fed, banking officials said.

Unknown hackers still managed to get away with about $80million, one of the largest known bank thefts in history.

The hackers breached Bangladesh Bank's systems last monthand stole its credentials for payment transfers, two seniorBangladesh Bank officials said.

They then bombarded the Federal Reserve Bank of New Yorkwith nearly three dozen requests to move money from theBangladesh bank's account there to entities in the Philippinesand Sri Lanka, the officials said.

Four requests to transfer a total of about $81 million tothe Philippines went through, but a fifth, for $20 million, to aSri Lankan non-profit organisation got held up because thehackers misspelled the name of the NGO.

The full name of the non-profit could not be learned. Butone of the officials said the hackers misspelled "foundation" inthe NGO's name as "fandation", prompting a routing bank,Deutsche Bank, to seek clarification from the Bangladesh centralbank, which stopped the transaction.

Deutsche Bank declined to comment.

At least $850 million in transfersprevented

At the same time the unusually high number of paymentinstructions and the transfer requests to private entities asopposed to other banks made the Fed suspicious, which alsoalerted the Bangladeshis, the officials said.

The details of how the hacking came to light and was stoppedbefore it did more damage have not been previously reported.Bangladesh Bank has billions of dollars in a current accountwith the Fed, which it uses for international settlements.

The transactions that got stopped totalled between $850million and $870 million, one of the officials said.

Last year, Russian computer security company Kaspersky Labsaid a multinational gang of cyber criminals had stolen as muchas $1 billion from as many as 100 financial institutions aroundthe world in about two years.

Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's son Qusay took $1 billionfrom Iraq's central bank on the orders of his father on the daybefore coalition forces began bombing the country in 2003,American and Iraqi officials have said. In 2007, guards at theDar Es Salaam bank in Baghdad made off with $282 million.

Portion of stolen money recovered

Bangladesh Bank has said it has recovered part of the moneythat was stolen, and is working with anti-money launderingauthorities in the Philippines to try to recover the rest of thefunds.

The recovered funds refer to the Sri Lanka transfer, which got stopped, one of the officials said.

The dizzying, global reach of the heist underscores thegrowing threat of cyber crime and how hackers can find weaklinks in even the most secure computer networks to steal moneyand wreak havoc.

More than a month after the attack, Bangladeshi officialsare scrambling to trace the money, shore up security andidentify weaknesses in their systems. They said there is littlehope of ever catching the hackers, and it could take monthsbefore the money is recovered, if at all.

Security experts said the perpetrators had deep knowledge ofthe Bangladeshi institution's internal workings, likely gainedby spying on bank workers.

Bangladesh blames Fed for not stopping hack

The Bangladesh government, meanwhile, is blaming the Fed fornot stopping the transactions earlier.

Finance Minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith told reporters onTuesday that the country may resort to suing the Fed to recoverthe money.

"The Fed must take responsibility," the minister said.

The New York Fed has said that its systems were not breachedand that it has been working with the Bangladesh central banksince the incident occurred.

The hacking of Bangladesh Bank happened sometime betweenFeb. 4 and Feb. 5, over the Bangladeshi weekend, which falls ona Friday, the officials said. The bank's offices were shut forthe holiday.

Initially, the central bank was not sure if their system hadbeen breached, but then cyber security experts, brought from theoutside to investigate, found hacker "footprints" that suggestedtheir system had been compromised, the officials said.

These experts could also tell that the attack originatedfrom outside Bangladesh, they said. The bank is still lookinginto how they got into the system and an internal investigationis also continuing, they said.

The bank suspects money sent to the Philippines was furtherdiverted to casinos there, the officials said.

The Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp, which oversees thegaming industry there, said it has launched an investigation.The country's anti-money laundering authority is also working onthe case.