Alejandro Díaz de León, the governor of Banco de México, said he expects prosecutors to be close to making arrests over the cyberattacks on the central bank's payment system SPEI in April and May, according to a report by Reforma.
Prosecutors have identified some of the accounts and names involved in the attacks, where hackers are thought to have siphoned around 300 million Mexican pesos with fraudulent methods using fake accounts, the central bank head reportedly said. Previous reports have said up to 400 million pesos were illegally withdrawn by hackers.
While no other attacks had been detected since May 8, the threat served as a wake-up call for the Mexican financial sector, Díaz de León added. "We often highlighted the importance of information technology departments — and in particular for cybersecurity issues — that should not be considered as merely an extra cost for institutions, but rather as an integral part of business," he said.
According to previous reports, 80% of Mexican banking transactions are now operating normally within the central bank payment system. Meanwhile, Banxico has formed an information security task force in the wake of the attacks, and set new guidelines for financial institutions using the SPEI system, including setting restrictions on the amounts, timing and delivery of transactions.
As of June 1, US$1 was equivalent to 19.87 Mexican pesos.
