Sri Lanka police arrest two men over cyber theft at the Taiwan Bank

The Sri Lanka authorities have arrested two men allegedly involved in cyber heist at an unnamed Taiwan bank that occurred last week.

The Sri Lanka police have arrested two men allegedly involved in the Taiwan cyberheist, the suspects are accused to have hacked into computers at a Taiwan bank and stole millions of dollars last week.

According to an official, the duo was identified and arrested after they tried to withdraw large sums of money that had been wired to their accounts with a Sri Lankan bank branch in the capital Colombo.

The police Criminal Investigation Department (CID) is still investigating the hack along with Taiwan police, the law enforcement agencies suspect the gang was composed by other individuals.

“We are looking at some $1.3 million that had come into three accounts in Sri Lanka,” the official involved with the investigation told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity. “We have taken two people into custody and we are looking for one more person.”

The Sri Lankan authorities did not disclose the name of the bank in Taiwan targeted victim of the cyber heist or the sum crooks has stolen. but a Sri Lankan media report said tens of millions of dollars had been stolen.

According to a Sri Lankan media, cybercriminals have stolen tens of millions of dollars had been wired out of the island.

The Financial Regulatory Commission in Tapei confirmed that the local Far Eastern International Bank’s SWIFT system had been infected with a computer virus but did not provide further details about the hack.

The Taiwanese media quoted the bank as saying that it experts discovered anomalies in its SWIFT system, the internal staff detected suspicious transactions starting Thursday to Sri Lanka, Cambodia and the United States.

The good news is that the Taiwan police have recovered most of the money with the help of counterparts in other countries.

In February 2015, Sri Lanka authorities investigated a similar cyber heist that involved the Bangladesh central bank, crooks transferred $20 million of stolen money to a Sri Lankan businesswoman.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – Taiwan bank, cybercrime)

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Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.