Hackers’ $81M Sneak Attack on World Banking

Super difficult. We recovered 40% from banks who were willing to look at our evidence. Turns out there was no international banking law that deals with stuff like this. Banks basically make their own decision whether who's right/wrong. The banks in Dubai and Far East basically told us to pound sand. We ended up threatening to sue our regional bank. They covered 20%. So we ended up losing 40%. The funny thing was FBI was involved. You'd think these guys are hot to trot. The guy we spoke to basically sounded like a local policeman whom you just told you lost your bike. "Oh yeah, we are tracking down leads". Net net, don't hire dumb people who can easily get phished. Once the money is gone, it almost always never come back. We counted ourselves lucky that we only lost 40% instead of 100% which is common from what we learned.

The malware integrated with the SWIFT software, printed manipulated printed receipts, ...

While it is not impossible that someone random was careful and clever enough to observe all the details necessary by watching the system for a while, what is known publicly about the attack IMHO looks more like someone prepared for an attack against SWIFT and then found a vulnerable endpoint.