Emerging market financial firms are soft cyber targets

Subject

Lessons learnt from the 2016 Bangladesh central bank cybertheft.

Significance

In February 2016 North Korean hackers routed 81 million dollars from the Bangladesh Bank -- Bangladesh’s central bank -- to Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC) in the Philippines in what was the world’s largest cyber heist. On January 31, 2019 Bangladesh Bank filed a lawsuit against RCBC. The theft exposed security deficiencies at every stage of the fraud, only some of which have been remedied.

Impacts

• Despite technical measures, computer systems can never be fully secured from human vulnerability.
• North Korean state-linked actors remain particularly active in financially motivated cybercrime.
• Western policy shift towards publicly naming and shaming state-linked cybercriminals will not deter Pyongyang.