6 US senators for prioritising cyber crime at G20 summit
Six US senators have urged President Barack Obama to prioritise cyber crime at this weekend's Group of 20 summit in China, in the wake of the theft of $81 million from Bangladesh's central bank, according to a letter obtained by Reuters.
In the letter sent to the White House ahead of the Sept 4-5 summit, Sherrod Brown, a senior Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, and five other Democratic senators say they want the US president to press leaders from the world's 20 biggest economies to commit in joint communiques to a "coordinated strategy to combat cyber-crime at critical financial institutions".
The letter, dated Monday, suggests that concern among US lawmakers is growing over the February incident in which hackers breached Bangladesh Bank's systems and used the SWIFT banking network to request nearly $1 billion from an account held at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Some of the dozens of orders were filled, with much of the lost $81 million disappearing into Philippines casinos -- prompting months of international finger-pointing, an ongoing investigation, and several requests from members of Congress for answers from the Fed and from SWIFT, the secure messaging service that banks use to transfer money around the world.
"Our financial institutions are connected in order to facilitate global commerce, but cyber criminals -- whether independent or state-sponsored -- imperil this international system in a way few threats have," the senators, headed by Gary Peters of Michigan, wrote in the letter to Obama.
Copies of the letter from the US senators were also sent to Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen and US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew.
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