There’s been much attention paid to an article in this month’s issue of The Atlantic that looks at financial insecurity in the US: “The Secret Shame of Middle-Class Americans.” It’s both a great and terrifying read.
This morning, Reuters reported on a different type of security concern:
SWIFT, the global financial network that banks use to transfer billions of dollars every day, warned its customers on Monday that it was aware of “a number of recent cyber incidents” where attackers had sent fraudulent messages over its system.
The disclosure came as law enforcement authorities in Bangladesh and elsewhere investigated the February cyber theft of $81 million from the Bangladesh central bank account at the New York Federal Reserve Bank. SWIFT has acknowledged that the scheme involved altering SWIFT software on Bangladesh Bank’s computers to hide evidence of fraudulent transfers.
How confident are we in the safety of the money we do have?