The government should carry out further investigation to find out whether the suspected Bangladesh Bank officials were really involved in the $101 million cyber heist, says Mohammed Farashuddin, head of the three-member body that probed the theft.

Investigators probing the cyber heist of $81 million from the Bangladesh central bank yesterday connected it to the hack at Sony Corp's

Forensic investigators examining the theft of $81 million from Bangladesh Bank's account with the New York Fed have

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Bangladesh Bank and SWIFT have vowed to work together to recover the $81 million that Bangladesh lost in a reserve heist three months ago.

The six visiting Interpol officials teaming up with the Criminal Investigation Department yesterday started forensic analysis of

The Bangladesh Bank was denied prompt responses from the intermediary banks and due diligence from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which would have raised the stakes of recovering a major chunk of the $81 million stolen by hackers.

Cyber thieves might have found it easier to break into the Bangladesh Bank system after its local area network (LAN) was connected with its SWIFT operation, according to central bankers and investigators.

Two engineers of SWIFT have come to Bangladesh to review its servers with the central bank -- 38 days after a band of hackers breached the payment system in an attempt to steal about $1 billion.

Twenty million pesos believed to be part of the $81million funds stolen from Bangladesh Bank was allegedly loaded onto the vehicle of the branch manager of Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation, a witness told a Senate hearing in the Philippines yesterday.

Confusion and panic was the order of the day at the Bangladesh Bank yesterday, a day after its governor Atiur Rahman stepped down and two deputy governors were removed hastily amid strong criticism over the central bank's handling of the $101 million cyber theft.

Bangladesh Bank Governor Atiur Rahman yesterday faced criticism from government high-ups and a number of ruling party leaders for “incompetent handling” of the cyber theft. Finance Minister AMA Muhith was furious, and hinted that the top management of the BB may see changes as the fallout of the theft of $101 million from the BB account with the New York Federal Reserve Bank.

The recent hacking of the Bangladesh Bank system to steal at least $100 million reveals the vulnerability of the central bank's IT infrastructure, weak operational architecture and probable insider link. The heist also puts to question what kind of network architecture and firewall it has in place. Everybody is talking about malware injection into the BB system but nobody is asking how the malware could enter the supposed-to-be most robust and secure system of a central bank in the first place.

Maia Santos-Deguito, manager of Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation's (RCBC) Jupiter Street branch in Makati City of the Philippines is feeling the heat of the allegation of laundering $81 million stolen from the US account of Bangladesh Bank.