British director Daniel Gordon explores the dangers of cybercrime by focusing on the 2016 theft of $81 million from the Bangladesh Central Bank. A group of hackers planned to steal $1 billion by hacking the bank’s online accounts. However, a single typing mistake stopped them, preventing what could have been the biggest online theft in modern history.
The incident highlights significant weaknesses in bank security systems and marks a shift from traditional bank robberies to modern cyber heists executed through computers. These attacks are often supported by states using cybercriminals to achieve political and economic goals, making it harder to combat them. As a result, cybercrime has become a dangerous tool for looting and destruction, harming people and national infrastructure.
Details of the Bangladesh Central Bank Theft:
The British documentary “The Billion Dollar Heist” dedicates significant time to uncovering the details of the attempt to steal from the Bangladesh Central Bank, identifying the involved parties, and most critically, diagnosing the weaknesses in global bank security that make them vulnerable to hackers.
To simplify the complexities of understanding advanced scientific methods used in electronic programs and internet infiltration, the documentary uses illustrative graphics and features experts in internet crimes. This makes it one of the most important documentaries revealing a world still unknown to millions of people.
The film imagines a scene from the evening of February 5, 2016, at the Bangladesh Central Bank, with most employees leaving for the weekend. It shows the employee in charge of transfers checking the SWIFT banking system to make sure it’s working properly. The only unusual thing is a printer malfunction that printed all the transfer requests to the Federal Reserve the day before. The employee thinks it’s just a technical glitch that will be fixed after the weekend.
When they returned, they couldn’t fix the program issue, so they had to run it manually. To their surprise, the printer began spitting out strange transfer requests to the Federal Reserve for $1 billion. The employees were shocked and confused by what they were seeing.
Weaknesses in Bank Security Systems: Vulnerabilities That Allow Breaches
The documentary pauses at this scene to consult experts in cyber hacking and cybersecurity. The experts confirm the dangers of relying almost entirely on banks for storing and transferring money, as their security systems are still weak and not tightly secured against breaches. This is primarily due to the design of systems that distribute sensitive financial information across interconnected computers.
The system used by banks was originally developed by the U.S. Pentagon for transmitting information to its units via the internet. This means the system was not originally designed for banking purposes. However, as the internet evolved and banks and people relied on it, it became widely used in banking operations. Banks attempted to secure it with the SWIFT system, which is the only way money transfers occur between banks. The technical issue with this system is that if any part of it is breached, hackers can easily access the rest, exposing all the secret codes.
Typo Prevents Bangladesh Bank from a $1 Billion Financial Catastrophe:
The bank employees first discover that there are transfer requests from their bank, made without their knowledge, to the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, requesting the transfer of over $900 million from their accounts to several global banks, including the Philippines Bank. They find that $81 million was actually transferred to the Philippines Bank over the weekend.
Experts also discover that the timing of the transfers on February 6, 2016, was strategically chosen to coincide with the Bangladesh Bank employees’ Friday holiday. The funds arrived in New York on Saturday and Sunday and entered the Philippines Bank during the Chinese New Year holiday. This was all done to thwart any attempts to stop the transfers, which appeared routine and unremarkable.
The billion-dollar transfers were nearly completed when a simple typographical error by the thieves thwarted their plan. One of them mistyped a single letter in the address of one of the banks receiving the large transfer. This error led the Federal Reserve employee to halt the remaining transfers. Additionally, another mistake involved a typo in the address of a bank receiving a significant amount of money, which made the bank’s name resemble that of a Greek ship listed on the U.S. blacklist for collaborating with Iranian authorities and secretly transporting goods. These typographical errors caused delays in the transfers, prompting the hackers to abort the transactions. During this time, Bangladeshi financial authorities managed to contact the Federal Reserve and expose the cyber theft attempt.
Money Laundering in Casinos:
The documentary moves to the Philippines to show how money laundering happens with the help of bank employees and crime gangs. It explains how the hackers moved $81 million from the bank by changing cash into casino chips, which is a common method there.
In these casinos, the money is exchanged for chips, effectively laundering the stolen funds. The thieves succeed in cleaning the money, and the police are unable to uncover their true identities.
At the end:
At the end of its journey, the film warns about the growing threat of such crimes, which require international cooperation to combat. Unfortunately, this cooperation is unlikely due to the sharp political divisions and wars occurring daily around the world.