SWIFT: A Security Researcher Gets Offered The Big Score

["Fergie" <fergdawg () netzero net>]

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Via InformationWeek.

[snip]

The stakes can get pretty high in the hacker economy.

A few years ago, a security researcher living overseas was contacted by a
man with an intriguing offer: The researcher would get 2.2 million euros
(more than $2.8 million) for each financial services firm he helped the man
and his group of cybercriminals infiltrate. All the researcher had to do
was provide the group with Windows Terminal Services access with
administrative privileges for each bank, which the thieves would then
penetrate via the Swift network. Swift, the Society for Worldwide Interbank
Financial Telecommunication, manages a network owned by about 8,000 banks
in 206 countries and territories to facilitate electronic transfers.

The thieves seemed to have deep knowledge of the Swift system and how it
could be manipulated. After pilfering funds from a number of banks, the
thieves planned to create a shell game that would transfer the money from
one financial institution to another until they could shake the trail of
anyone investigating the theft and access the money. Cracking into the
Swift systems was made easier, the researcher claims, by the presence of a
critical Microsoft bug that at the time left vulnerable Internet
Information Services servers running Secure Sockets Layer transactions.

[snip]

More:
http://www.informationweek.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=197004915

Background:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/08/22/terrorist_finance_snoop/

- - ferg

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--
"Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson
 Engineering Architecture for the Internet
 fergdawg(at)netzero.net
 ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/


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