A Heist Aimed At World Banking

Tens of millions of dollars siphoned from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. A shadowy set of casinos in the Philippines. A large bank in Bangladesh with creaky technology. An unknown — and perhaps uncatchable — group of anonymous thieves with sophisticated hacking skills.

What unites this curious cast of characters and made possible one of the most brazen digital bank heists ever is a ubiquitous and highly trusted international bank messaging system called Swift.

Swift — the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication — is billed as a supersecure system that banks use to authorize payments from one account to another. “The RollsRoyce of payments networks,” one financial analyst said.

But, for the first time since hackers cap - tured $81 million f rom Ba ngladesh’s central bank in February, Swift recently acknowledged that the t h i eves have tried to carry out similar heists at other banks on its network by sneaking into the beating heart of the global banking system.

“There are many banks out there right now saying, ‘ There but for the grace of God go us,’ ” said Gareth Lodge, a payments analyst at Celent, a financial consulting firm.

The admission that the attack was not a one-time event in a developing country but perhaps part of a broader threat has thrust Swift into a spotlight, raising questions about how securely money is being moved around the world. Some financial security experts point out the Swift system is only as safe as its weakest link.

The attack also reflects a growing sophistication among digital criminals, who for years have breached personal