Bluenoroff is Kaspersky's name for a financially motivated unit within the broader Lazarus formation. Kaspersky introduced the designation publicly in 2017 while documenting bank intrusions connected to the 2016 Bangladesh Central Bank theft and other attacks on financial institutions and SWIFT-connected systems. The group used watering holes, backdoors, compromised infrastructure, and malware tailored to banking environments, with activity spanning multiple countries. By 2022, Kaspersky described a shift from banks and SWIFT servers toward cryptocurrency businesses as the group's principal source of illicit income. Operators created convincing cryptocurrency software companies and applications, delivered backdoored updates, and used malicious documents and social engineering to abuse trust. The reporting portrays Bluenoroff as able to draw on the larger formation's malware, exploits, and infrastructure while maintaining a distinct financial objective.
Bangladesh Central Bank
#BangSwift • 2016-02
🇧🇩 Bangladesh
The Bangladesh Bank BangSwift heist used authenticated SWIFT messages and custom malware tailored to SWIFT Alliance Access and an Oracle database environment to hide or manipulate transaction records, with reporting describing attempted transfers of roughly $951 million and about $101 million stolen. BAE Systems, Symantec, and Anomali connected the SWIFT malware to a wider bank-targeting toolset through shared wiping routines, Trojan.Banswift, Backdoor.Contopee, and Lazarus-associated Operation Blockbuster code overlaps, supporting the existing Bluenoroff attribution for a financially motivated DPRK-linked banking operation.
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20
Related Reports
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1
Affected Countries
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126
Months Since
Related Actors
First seen: 2017-04 •
Last seen: 2026-07
Related Reports
2021-03-23
Carnegie Endowment
2019-08-31
UN