Sri Lanka discloses another missing payment, days after hackers stole $2.5M from its finance ministry

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

Authorities detected the incidental aft hackers allegedly tried to divert different outgo intended for India. 

Australian officials are reportedly alert of irregularities successful payments owed to the country, suggesting that the Sri Lankan thefts could beryllium broader than archetypal 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 the country’s concern ministry.

Treasury Secretary Harshana Suriyapperuma told reporters astatine a property league past week that the hackers diverted the outgo from the country’s postal authorization “to different slope accounts, alternatively of the intended recipient.”

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

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

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

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