Analyzing Endpoint Vulnerabilities And Network Exploitation In Modern Bank Cyber Heists
- IJLLR Journal
- 6 days ago
- 1 min read
Vijayaraghavan K, LLM, School of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Administration, Tamil Nadu Dr. Ambedkar Law University, School of Excellence, Taramani, Chennai 600113, Tamil Nadu, India
ABSTRACT
The evolution of financial crime has culminated in highly sophisticated cyber heists targeting global banking infrastructures, moving away from physical bank robberies toward digital, transnational operations. The article examines three pivotal case studies that redefined the threat landscape of financial technology: Bangladesh Bank heist, Carbanak heist and Cosmos Bank heist. The 2016 Bangladesh Bank heist underlines the compromised the central bank’s local SWIFT terminal. In contrast, the Carbanak heist (2013–2015) highlighted a prolonged, multi-institution assault targeting internal banking networks rather than external payment rails. The 2018 Cosmos Bank heist exemplified a hybrid approach, combining infrastructure manipulation with coordinated, real-world execution. Attackers targeted the cooperative bank by creating a malicious proxy server that intercepted and isolated the bank’s central switching system from its core banking backend. Cumulatively, these three heists underscore a critical paradigm shift in banking security. They expose how modern cybercriminals exploit the weakest links in the financial ecosystem, utilizing temporal gaps, internal human vulnerabilities, and isolated network infrastructures. In response, the global banking sector has been forced to abandon perimeter-based defences in favour of Zero Trust architectures, advanced behavioural analytics, and stringent endpoint monitoring for cross-border financial routing systems.
Keywords: Malware reconnaissance; Bangladesh bank heist; Carbanak heist; Cosmos bank heist; cybersecurity.
