NSA's Hacking group TAO

The April 14th issue of WIRED by Andy Greenberg went into greater detail on the same story:

“…the Shadow Brokers published documents that—if legitimate—show just how thoroughly US intelligence has compromised elements of the global banking system. The new leak includes evidence that the NSA hacked into EastNets, a Dubai-based firm that oversees payments in the global SWIFT transaction system for dozens of client banks and other firms, particularly in the Middle East. The leak includes detailed lists of hacked or potentially targeted computers, including those belonging to firms in Qatar, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Syria, Yemen, and the Palestinian territories. Also included in the data dump, as in previous Shadow Brokers releases, are a load of fresh hacking tools, this time targeting a slew of Windows versions.”

For background, it is important to know that monitoring SWIFT is big business for spies. If you want to know what is happening, you follow the money. The NSA knows this and that is why they likely have been monitoring global transactions. In addition, the United States and/or United Nations have used their position to suggest that certain countries should be cutoff from SWIFT. Such a cutting off is a powerful economic weapon. Even the threat has serious ramifications. This was used recently with North Korea. Before that, SWIFT cutoff was used against Iran. Russia has feared being denied access to SWIFT so much that they created their own version. Perhaps the best known alternative was developed by China, known as CIPS (China International Payment System). According to Financial Times, the launch of CIPS was undertaken precisely because the Chinese feared SWIFT spying:

http:// globaleconomicwarfare.com/2017/05/swift-cips-and-nsa-spy-tools/