Heist: A SWIFT Response to Conspiracy Deniers
To be featured in a forthcoming book: Operation Virus
Fresh off the top of my head using the example of hackers that never sleep. (Note: this is oversimplified; and skips lots of steps hackers will or will not tell people about. Specialized knowledge is key to hackers. And they know it.)
Billion Dollar Heist
While the world sleeps, at least one-fourth to one-third of it is literally asleep at all times (human nature), crafty hackers can make their plays to acquire data through corporate espionage up to grand larceny of central bank currencies. The latter occurred in just the past decade in Bangladesh and was memorialized in the documentary: Billion Dollar Heist (2023).[i]
In February 2016, a hack was completed over the course of a 4-day weekend (given a Bangladeshi holiday, the typical U.S. Federal Reserve off days, and the Chinese Lunar New Year) that gave the hackers the time needed to confound attempts to stop them, or catch them, mid-hack.
While the affiliation of the Bangladeshi breach of a Central Bank is tied to North Korea (the Lazarus Group)[ii] (who operates at the behest of China usually), the overarching theme is: no matter what system is in place, people are seen as the weakest link, at multiple stages, and are targeted by nation-state backed hackers for hire.
In the case of the Bangladeshis, this SWIFT crime took a little more than one year to achieve its successful result: acquiring $81 million without being caught.[iii] Nevertheless, mistakes were made by this hacking crew. A spelling error on SWIFT routing paperwork and a lack of patience resulted in nearly $900 million dollars being left on the table by them.
The key internet-connected banking system these hackers took apart: SWIFT. The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications became a hot discussion as the United States-European Union-NATO “kicked” Russia off this global system in March 2022 as a 5th generation warfare tactic against Russia (and Belarus) regarding the Ukraine conflict.[iv]
The hackers planned out their attempts by identifying and targeting a weak link in this international system of financial transactions. Through sophisticated social engineering techniques – targeting specific people at the Bangladeshi bank with spear-phishing emails (a resume inside a zip file) – and thereafter, embedding computer code to take over their local systems with malware, giving them access into the larger banking network.
The network, with communications that are routed to departments with linking and access criteria achieved from credentials gathered, approves account level access through the network’s design and assigned authorization(s). The credentials acquired allowed the hackers time to embed themselves deep inside the Bangladeshi network for many months, unnoticed, gathering information and more credentials to access further networks, that ultimately led to the key SWIFT access terminal to trigger the outflow of currency.
This terminal access generated the right signals for the U.S. Federal Reserve to send currency to a 3rd party bank in the Philippines from the Bangladeshi central bank. The Philippines is where the hackers physically created accounts; and later, routed their transactions.
The physical weakness in this network: switches that were not properly segmented (keeping groups of computers isolated from access by unauthorized networked computers and their access-restricted operators). This allowed the hackers to traverse their entire network, hide their hacking tracks as they went, and finally land in the spot to access the SWIFT terminal to commit the crime in a timely manner.
The physical action also involved laundering through the unregulated Pilipino casino industry using players acting together at a table to take currency coming from the bank and wash it at the casino tables over a Chinese holiday where the volume of casino play likely was up over normal weekends.
Why tell this story?
Because it reflects that planning a massive agenda to take $1,000,000,000 dollars is not as difficult (in the broad strokes) as the media tells us could never occur with a coronavirus coming out of a BSL2-4 lab and the militaristic response thereafter to it. In the Billion Dollar Heist, to induce concerns or reflect on current globalist fear points, a journalist tells us that 4 major civilization threats exist today: Pandemics, Weapons of Mass Destruction, Climate Change and Cyberwarfare.
Such reflects the key Globalist control mechanisms in play today:
Lockdowns as the preferred response to viruses no one can see
Threats of strategic nuke deployment, an utterly obtuse concept
Climate Change pushed by the media and scientists to their benefit
Cyberattacks – as Klaus Schwab intones – are the viruses to fear most
Ask yourself: if one wants to control the masses, does not like the outcomes in the current system (a credit-driven failing system), sees threats from political movements (Populist Nationalists) and wants to deflect attention away from ongoing crimes and state-level corruption (using all sorts of social engineering and well-funded activist groups, like hackers are, to destabilize those political movements), what do you do?
Use wealth, organizations, technologies and techniques that are at one’s fingertips to create the outcomes one wants. Given that numerous billionaires now have wealth levels on par with the yearly GDPs of mid-sized countries in Africa, Asia or South America; World Organizations have high-level personnel connected (penetrated) inside the majority of the recognized countries in the world (194); who are able to utilize their access and acquired roles (financial, political or scientific authority); and relationships (hacking the human genome or controlling intel operations), is that much different (aside from the economic criminality of scale) to the Bangladeshi example?
The time scale is longer at 5-10 years (think: Agenda 2030), started in 2020.
War Room Example: Sequoia Capital as a node in political intrigues. FBI is an intel gathering operation. Government sells out its populations and blames people for their horrific policies driven by personal kickbacks to bad actors and positions of prestige doled out for carrying out the treason.
References
[i] https://www1.freemoviesfull.com/watch-movie/watch-billion-dollar-heist-99367.9849325
[ii] https://www.nccgroup.com/us/the-lazarus-group-north-korean-scourge-for-plus10-years/
[iii] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/01/business/dealbook/hackers-81-million-sneak-attack-on-world-banking.html
[iv] https://www.swift.com/news-events/news/message-swift-community
Larry Ellison from Oracle is a vicious, soulless man. I remember when he was consolidating the Enterprise Resource Planning software market...by consolidating I mean via hostile takeovers of any and all major competitors, like PeopleSoft and JD Edwards. When those two tried to avoid his control they filed legal challenges that temporarily succeeded in holding off his takeovers. Ellison swore he would take them over and destroy them, their leadership for resisting his control. It was nasty, personal, directed attacks. Large numbers of employees would lose their jobs, their products superior to Oracle's across the spectrum of offerings. But he had money and political clout. And ultimately prevailed. A pathway to singular dominance similar to Microsoft's Bill Gates. Maniacal egomaniacs. That's who these people are. Ruthless and destructive of all that stands in their power-grabbing ways. Who view less powerful people as vermin.