A printer error first tipped off Bangladesh’s central bank to one of the biggest cyber heists in recent history, according to a complaint filed to police that provided new details on the attempted theft of nearly $1 billion.
Zubair Bin Huda, a joint director of Bangladesh Bank, found the printer tray empty when he looked on the morning of Feb. 5 for confirmations of SWIFT financial transactions that are normally printed automatically overnight. He then tried and failed to print out the messages manually from the SWIFT system, according to his complaint to police, the first step needed to start an official investigation.
“We thought it was a common problem just like any other day,” Huda said in the complaint.
Because it was a Friday -- a weekend in Muslim-majority Bangladesh -- Huda left the office around 11:15 a.m. and asked his colleagues to help fix the problem. It took them more than 24 hours before they could manually print the receipts, which revealed dozens of questionable transactions that sent the bank racing to stop cash from leaving its account with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to the Philippines, Sri Lanka and beyond.
The case has prompted central banks around the globe to examine cyber security measures. It has also led to the resignation of Bangladesh’s central bank governor and put money laundering in the Philippines under scrutiny.
File is Missing
Proloy Kumar Saha, an inspector of Motijheel Police Station where the complaint was filed, confirmed the details and said it was being transferred to the Criminal Investigation Department. Huda is not a suspect in the case and didn’t accuse anyone of wrongdoing in the document, known as a First Information Report. He didn’t respond to multiple phone calls.
On Saturday, Feb. 6, Huda noticed that the software on the terminal connecting to the SWIFT system wasn’t responding. When an attempt was made to restart the terminal, a message flashed: “A file is missing or changed,” according to the complaint.
By 12.30 p.m., Huda and his team had managed to get the terminal started. While the automatic printing system still didn’t work, they managed to print them manually. What they found surprised them: The receipts show the Federal Reserve Bank of New York sent back queries to Bangladesh Bank against 46 payment orders in different messages, according to the complaint.
Weekend Phone Calls