LONDON: International financial messaging service Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telec­om­­­munication (SWIFT) told clients on Friday to share information on att­acks on the system to help prevent hacking, after criminals used its messages to steal $81 million from the Bangladesh central bank.

Earlier on Friday, Reuters reported that Wells Fargo, Ecuador’s Banco del Austro (BDA) and Citibank, whose managing director, Fran­chise Risk and Strategy, Yawar Shah, is SWIFT’s cha­ir­­man, did not inform SWIFT of an attack last year in which more than $12m was stolen from BDA.

The banks and Shah all declined to comment on why they did not inform SWIFT.

Banks use secure SWIFT messages for issuing payment instructions to each other. The network is considered the backbone of int­e­­rnational finance but faith in its security has been rocked by the theft from Bank Bangladesh’s account at the Federal Reserve Ba­nk of New York.

Published in Dawn, May 22nd, 2016