Sri Lanka Discloses Another Missing Payment, Days After Hackers Stole $2.5m From Its Finance Ministry

Sri Lanka said connected Tuesday that a costs of astir $625,000 (about 199.7 cardinal Sri Lankan rupees) to nan U.S. Postal Service has been missing for respective weeks, aft U.S. officials reported that nan costs had grounded to arrive, reports section media.

Authorities detected nan incident aft hackers allegedly tried to divert different costs intended for India. 

Australian officials are reportedly alert of irregularities successful payments owed to nan country, suggesting that nan Sri Lankan thefts could beryllium broader than first thought.

The disclosure comes days aft Sri Lankan officials said they were probing the theft of $2.5 million by a hacker who had targeted nan country’s finance ministry.

Treasury Secretary Harshana Suriyapperuma told reporters astatine a property convention past week that nan hackers diverted nan costs from nan country’s postal authority “to different slope accounts, alternatively of nan intended recipient.”

These incidents look to beryllium business email compromise attacks, successful which hackers break into email inboxes aliases different accounting systems to manipulate slope accounts and routing numbers during nan process of paying an invoice.

Business email discuss scams are celebrated pinch cybercriminals, and caller FBI information has shown specified attacks stay 1 of nan apical sources of cybercriminal profits, arsenic hackers tin steal immense sums of money via a azygous breach. The FBI says email discuss attacks resulted successful billions successful dollars of losses past twelvemonth alone.

News of nan successive information lapses has put caller unit connected nan Sri Lankan authorities aft years of financial difficulties. The state is still recovering an economical situation that led to it defaulting connected its indebtedness successful 2022, and resulted successful months of protests that culminated successful nan ouster of then-president Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

It’s presently unclear if nan 2 thefts are linked. Member of Parliament Nalinda Jayatissa said nan authorities is investigating whether nan incidents are connected.