Indian bank says suffered cyber attack via SWIFT platform

MUMBAI: India’s City Union Bank said yesterday that “cyber criminals” had hacked its systems and transferred nearly US$2 million (RM5.8 million) through three unauthorised remittances to lenders overseas via the SWIFT financial platform.

The comments come after the small private lender on Saturday had disclosed it had discovered the three “fraudulent remittances”, which were sent via correspondent banks to accounts in Dubai, Turkey and China.

CEO N. Kamakodi called it a “conspiracy” involving multiple countries, and added the lender was still investigating how it had happened.

“This is basically a cyber attack by international cyber criminals,” he told Reuters in a phone interview.

Kamakodi added they saw “so far no evidence of any internal staff involvement”, but said “we are very clear now the account holders are part of this conspiracy”.

City Union said on Saturday it had been able to block one of the remittances, totalling US$500,000, that was being sent through a Standard Chartered Bank account in New York to a Dubai-based lender. A second transfer of € 300,000 (RM1.46 million) was routed through a Standard Chartered Bank account in Frankfurt to a Turkish account, although the Turkish lender had blocked the transfer from being finalised.

A third totalling US$1 million was sent through a Bank of America account in New York to a China-based bank, which Kamakodi on Sunday identified as Zhejiang Rural Credit Cooperative Union in Hangzhou, China.

Kamakodi said the lender was working with Indian authorities to work with affected countries to investigate what happened. He added City Union was also strengthening its internal monitoring systems. – Reuters