Cybersecurity
Empty Printer Tray Among Missed Cues Cited in Bangladesh Hack
- Human error at central bank aided heist, interim report says
- Indian contractor also faulted for disarming security software
This article is for subscribers only.
Most days, Mizanur Rahman Bhuiyan would arrive at the Bangladesh central bank’s accounts department to find a stack of printed money-transfer confirmations. On the first Friday of February, he found an empty printer tray.
Printer problems were so routine that Bhuiyan and other bank employees didn’t check their Swift bank-messaging terminal for the day’s money-transfer reports. Had they looked, they might have noticed a red flag: No transactions had been recorded overnight, because hackers had deleted the logs just hours earlier in a bid to steal $1 billion.