February 4, 2016 presented the much-anticipated opportunity. As dusk fell, the concerned BB officer closed the SWIFT terminal. Three hours later, the hackers entered the terminal and sent a total of 35 requests to the Federal Reserve Bank in New York to release a total of US$951 million. This was unusual, as Bangladesh usually requests the release of US$300,000 to 500,000.
It was a fine morning in New York when the Federal Reserve heeded the requests. Since the funds transfer required the involvement of an intermediary bank, and the hackers did not comply with protocol when making the requests, the Federal Reserve operator deemed the requests incomplete and rejected them.
Later, the hackers made necessary corrections and managed to resend 34 requests flawlessly. In the balance request, Germany’s Deutsche Bank was mentioned as the intermediary bank and a foundation in Sri Lanka as the transaction destination. The hackers made a spelling mistake while typing the name of the Sri Lankan foundation, causing Deutsche Bank to block the transaction.
Another 34 requests were accepted and an amount of US$81 million was transferred to Manila, Philippines in lieu of four requests. Soon after the statement, the hackers began the process of erasing all traces of their illegal activities.
The hackers knew that transaction details are usually printed in banks. To counter this, he systematically prevented the printers from producing any output.
The remaining 30 transaction requests were being processed, but the hackers exited the computer system at 3:59 p.m., believing that the Federal Reserve’s operations for the day had ended.