Hackers have released documents and files that cybersecurity experts say indicate the US National Security Agency had accessed the SWIFT interbank messaging system, allowing it to monitor money flows among some Middle Eastern and Latin American banks.
The release on Friday included computer code that could be adapted by criminals to break into SWIFT servers and monitor messaging activity, said Shane Shook, a cyber security consultant who has helped banks investigate breaches of their SWIFT systems.
The documents and files were released by a group calling themselves The Shadow Brokers. Some of the records bear NSA seals, but Reuters could not confirm their authenticity.
The NSA could not immediately be reached for comment.
Also published were many programs for attacking various versions of the Windows operating system, at least some of which still work, researchers said.
In a statement to Reuters, Microsoft, maker of Windows, said it had not been warned by any part of the US government that such files existed or had been stolen.
Shook said criminal hackers could use the information released on Friday to hack into banks and steal money in operations mimicking a heist last year of $US81 million from the Bangladesh central bank.
The SWIFT messaging system is used by banks to transfer trillions of dollars each day. Belgium-based SWIFT downplayed the risk of attacks employing the code released by hackers on Friday.
SWIFT said it regularly releases security updates and instructs client banks on how to handle known threats.
SWIFT said it had no evidence that the main SWIFT network had ever been accessed without authorisation.
It was possible that the local messaging systems of some SWIFT client banks had been breached, SWIFT said in a statement, which did not specifically mention the NSA.
The documents released by the Shadow Brokers on Friday indicate that the NSA may have accessed the SWIFT network through service bureaus. SWIFT service bureaus are companies that provide an access point to the SWIFT system for the network's smaller clients and may send or receive messages regarding money transfers on their behalf.
"If you hack the service bureau, it means that you also have access to all of their clients, all of the banks," said Matt Suiche, founder of the United Arab Emirates-based cybersecurity firm Comae Technologies, who has studied the Shadow Broker releases and believes the group has access to NSA files.
The documents posted by the Shadow Brokers include Excel files listing computers on a service bureau network, user names, passwords and other data, Suiche said.
"That's information you can only get if you compromise the system," he said.
Cris Thomas, a prominent security researcher with the cybersecurity firm Tenable, said the documents and files released by the Shadow Brokers show "the NSA has been able to compromise SWIFT banking systems, presumably as a way to monitor, if not disrupt, financial transactions to terrorists groups".
Reuters could not confirm whether the documents released Friday by the Shadow Brokers, if authentic, were related to NSA monitoring of SWIFT transfers since 2013.
The documents released by the hackers did not clearly indicate whether the NSA had actually used all the techniques cited for monitoring SWIFT messages.
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