Mexico's banking system has somehow misplaced between $18 million and $20 million in electronic transfers between banks, authorities said Monday, the latest in a series of embarrassing breakdowns that have affected debit card purchases and e-payments across the country. Mexico's central bank and regulatory agencies said they are not sure whether the problem with settlement transactions among banks was the work of outside hackers, an inside scam or errors. But in a country where phishing emails and freelance debt collectors often use banks' logos and letterheads, it is no secret that bank security standards are lax. Di Constanzo said only that "the identity and recipients of some transactions made through the SPEI (Mexico's official electronic payment system) have not been identified." After the vulnerability was detected, the three banks abandoned the outside contractor that supplied the defective software and changed over to the central bank's own settlement system.

Source: ABC News May 14, 2018 21:36 UTC