Hackers Lost Out On $780 Million Due To Spelling Mistake

We’ve all had that moment, you are writing an email and are worrying so much about your wording that just as you hit send something jumps out at you. Forgot to attach the file you were talking about or added the wrong details by mistake? Imagine if you were making a bank transfer and made the same mistake, pretty big deal. Even bigger if the money doesn’t belong to you and all that stopped you getting it was the spelling mistake.

The hackers in question managed to gain access to the servers of Bangladesh Bank, from there they went about their business. In total, they were going to send somewhere close to $850 million to different accounts in the Philippines and Sri Lanka in just 13 transfers. $81 million of these went through before the fifth one was flagged up by a routing bank in Germany.

The reason for the flag was simple, “fandation”. Instead of putting “foundation”, the hackers had mistyped and put in “fandation”. If the hack had been successful it would have been one of the largest of its kind on record, while $81 million is impressive you have to think that with a little spell check they could have made off with a lot more.