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By Huw Jones
LONDON, July 11 (Reuters) - SWIFT, a messaging system usedby banks across the world, announced further steps on Monday tobolster its defences against hackers, after criminals sentfraudulent payment instructions across its network.
The Society for Worldwide Interbank FinancialTelecommunication said it has hired two outside cyber securityspecialists, BAE Systems and Fox-IT, to reinforcein-house expertise, and has set up a team to share cyber defence"best practice" among its customers.
In February, thieves hacked into the Bangladesh centralbank's interface with SWIFT's network, which is a pipeline fortransferring funds and the backbone of international finance.
They sent payment instructions to the Federal Reserve Bankof New York, telling it to transfer $951 million from BankBangladesh's account to accounts in the Philippines. Most of thetransactions were blocked but four went through, amounting to$81 million that remains missing.
SWIFT, a Belgium-based co-operative owned by its users, hadalready unveiled measures to tighten up security.
On Monday it announced it was also setting up a Forensicsand Customer Security Intelligence team to investigate securityincidents at customers.
The team will help in the collection and sharing ofanonymised information with customers on how best to deal withhackers.
SWIFT Chief Technology Officer Craig Young said informationfrom banks that have been subject to fraud attempts was crucialfor identifying new malware.
"We therefore continue to remind customers that they areobliged to inform SWIFT of such incidents as soon as possible,and to proactively share all relevant information with us so wecan assist all SWIFT users," Young said in a statement.
SWIFT said its information-sharing initiative has grownsignificantly since its launch, and now includes detailedintelligence and analysis on the modus operandi of attackers inrecent customer fraud cases.
"In addition SWIFT has published an inventory containingsome of the specific malware used in reported attacks, as wellas indicators of compromise (IoCs) that SWIFT has developed toassist other customers in detecting threats operating in theirenvironments," the company said. (Reporting by Huw Jones; Editing by Susan Fenton)