#bdo hacking

The National Bureau of Investigation last Friday arrested 5 suspects behind the recent hacking of BDO online accounts. Dubbed the "Mark Nagoyo" group, the arrested individuals did not give any statement regarding the BDO hack when asked by authorities or the media. Back in November/December of 2021, around 700 BDO accounts were hacked and money were transferred to a UnionBank account under the name of Mark Nagoyo which prompted an investigation by the BSP and the NBI. Take for example the recent BDO hacking incident that happened last December 2021. It was perhaps one of the biggest incidents or widely publicized hacking incidents in the Philippine financial system (the closest we could think of was the involvement of RCBC in February 2016 where hackers stole $81 million from the Bangladesh central bank's account with the US Federal Reserve in New York). In essence, the strategy in this particular incident was like this -- identify hackable online bank accounts (in this case, BDO), transfer funds to an intermediary bank where you can siphon money to a fictitious or dummy bank account (in this case, UnionBank) and then use the collected funds to buy crypto-currency (in this case, Bitcoin). In the end, this incident has both damaged the reputation of the Philippine banks (especially BDO) and could also force stricter regulations with regard to crypto-currencies. Read more in our articles including "5 suspected BDO hackers arrested by NBI" and "Crypto has made hacking online banks more rewarding".