BAE Systems blames North Korea’s Lazarus hackers for cyberattack on Taiwanese bank

BAE Systems, the defence and security firm, said on Monday that it believed the North Korean Lazarus hacking group was likely to have been responsible for a recent cyber heist in Taiwan, the latest in a string of hacks targeting the global Swift messaging system. The British firm has previously linked Lazarus to last year’s US$81 million cyber heist at Bangladesh’s central bank, as have other cyber firms including Russia’s Kaspersky Lab and California-based Symantec. BAE’s claim that Lazarus was probably responsible for the hack on Taiwan’s Far Eastern International Bank showed that North Korea was continuing to seek to generate cash through hacking. Taiwan’s Central News Agency reported last week that while hackers sought to steal about US$60 million from Far Eastern Bank, all but 500,000 dollar had been recovered. BAE previously disclosed that Lazarus attempted to steal money from banks in Mexico and Poland, though there is no evidence the effort succeeded. A security executive with Swift ( Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication), a Belgium-based cooperative owned by banks, said last week that hackers had continued to target the message system this year, although many attempts had been thwarted by the new security controls.