Tien Pong Bank

#TPBank • 2015-05

🇻🇳 Viet Nam

Vietnam’s Tien Phong Bank reported an attempted theft of more than EUR 1 million through fraudulent SWIFT messages in 2015. Linked financial-incident and UN Panel reporting place the case within the broader DPRK/Lazarus-associated pattern of SWIFT-enabled bank theft attempts, but provide limited public detail on the intrusion chain.

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Bluenoroff

Kaspersky

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.

Lazarus Under The Hood
First seen: 2017-04 • Last seen: 2026-07

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