Bad Spelling Costs Hackers $800 Million

Remember kids, spelling is important, you need to pay attention to your spelling if you want to get ahead in life and in this digital age, your spelling needs to be on point even if you’re trying to hack into a bank to steal hundreds of millions of dollars. That’s what a group of hackers found out the hard way when they missed out on a chance to steal as much as $800 million just because of their sloppy spelling.

This group of hackers was able to hack into the servers of the Bangladesh Bank and they managed to steal $81 million by flooding the Federal Reserve Bank in New York with requests for transfers to companies based in Sri Lanka and the Philippines.

Perhaps they celebrated too early after four transfers were successfully completed because in the following requests they spelled “foundation” incorrectly and this caused the authorities to take notice and halt the transfers.

The hackers had sent requests for 13 transfers and if they had spelled everything correctly and if the transfers had been approved, they would have stolen more than $800 million. In that case, this would have been one of the biggest banking hacks in history, and fodder for a Hollywood thriller.

The Bangladesh Bank has been able to recover some of the money that the hackers had stolen and it’s now working with anti-money laundering authorities to trace the rest of the money. No word as yet on the hackers, where they were from and if an international manhunt to capture them is underway.

Adnan Farooqui
Categories: General
Tags: Hacking