Last checked at 
(Recast, adds details throughout)
By My Pham and Mai Nguyen
HANOI, May 15 (Reuters) - Vietnam's Tien Phong Bank (TPBank)said on Sunday it had thwarting a cyber fraud attempt late lastyear, and a third-party service it used to connect with theSWIFT global money transfers system may have been attacked byhackers.
In an emailed statement responding to Reuters queries, TPBanksaid the attack involved a suspect transaction worth more than 1million euros ($1.13 million). It said it has since stoppedusing the outside vendor on SWIFT's advice.
SWIFT declined to comment.
BAE Systems last week said malware was used totarget a Vietnamese commercial bank using fraudulent messages onthe SWIFT network. The malware operated in a similar way to thatused by hackers in the cyber heist of $81 million from theBangladesh central bank in February.
BAE did not name the Vietnamese bank, but SWIFT, theBrussels-based global financial messaging network, disclosedlast Thursday that malware targeting a commercial bank had beendiscovered.
"Via a risk warning and oversight system and a tightinternal control process, TPBank has identified a suspicioustransaction worth more than a million euros transferred byinvalid SWIFT messages that was not executed by the bankitself," TPBank said in the emailed statement.
"This attack ... did not cause any losses and had no impacton the SWIFT system in particular and the transaction systembetween the bank and customers in general," it said.
The bank said the servers of the third-party vendor werebased overseas, but did not say where. It said the vendor hadused a software application that SWIFT had told the bank mayhave been subject to the malware assault.
TPBank, founded in 2008 by Vietnam's top technology firm FPTCorp, is considered one of Vietnam's most modern andtechnologically savvy banks.
Hanoi-based TPBank on May 11 received the "Best InternetBanking" prize from The Asian Banker.
TPBank's major shareholders include Doji, a local gold andjewellery firm, state-run Vietnam National ReinsuranceCorporation and Singapore-based SBI Ven Holding PteLtd, a unit of Japanese financial services conglomerate SBIHoldings Inc. FPT has divested most of itsshareholdings and now has a 9 percent stake in TPBank.
After BAE systems said a Vietnamese bank had been targeted,TPBank, when contacted by Reuters on Friday, initially denied ithad been subject of an attack, saying it "did not have anyproblems."
($1 = 0.8841 euros) (Writing by Martin Petty; Editing by Martin Howell)