Nepal Rastra Bank making utmost efforts to retrieve money transferred by hackers

KATHMANDU, Oct 24: Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB), the central bank of Nepal, said that it was making utmost efforts to retrieve the money amounting to over Rs 400 million transferred to various banks abroad by hackers using SWIFT from NIC Asia Bank.

Some unidentified hackers reportedly broke into the Society for Worldwide Interbank Telecommunication (SWIFT), an international payment network, at the NIC Asia Bank in Kathmandu, and had siphoned off the amount from there during the Tihar holidays.

Hackers were learnt to have transferred the amount to eight banks in six countries.

According to the Joint-Spokesperson at the NRB, Rajendra Pandit, NRB has already sought help of the domestic banks to make efforts to retrieve the amount transferred abroad.

Also, it has sought help of banks in those six countries from where hackers have requested the transfer.

NIC Asia Bank too has been stepping up its effort towards this end.

A total of 11,000 banking and financial institutions across 200 countries are said to be using SWIFT system.

Joint-Spokesperson Pandit also reminded that the NRB had instructed all the banks and financial institutions to pay special attention to the usage of IT in banking not only to make banking easier, convenient but also to curb the cyber attack and illegal transferring in the banking.

NRB on Monday had summoned the Chief of the IT department of all the banks in the capital to discuss how to secure the internal system of banking.