Cyber security firm Kaspersky Lab says it has obtained digital evidence that bolsters suspicions by some researchers that North Korea was involved in last year's $81 million cyber heist of the Bangladesh central bank's account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Alarmed by the theft of $81 million from Bangladesh's central bank in February, one of the world's biggest ever cyber heists, cybersecurity is among the top concerns discussed at Singapore's annual Shangri-La Dialogue Asian security summit. For the first time, the conference allots one of its six special sessions to cybersecurity.

The SWIFT secure messaging service that underpins international banking says it is planning to launch a new security programme as it fights to rebuild its reputation in the wake of the Bangladesh Bank heist.

Bangladesh's central bank was vulnerable to hackers because it did not have a firewall and used second-hand, $10 switches to network computers connected to the SWIFT global payment network, an investigator into one of the world's biggest cyber heists says.

Three messages sent by the Bangladeshi central bank to the Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. (RCBC) on the morning of February 9, alerting the Yuchengco-controlled financial institution to the dubious provenance of the $81 million that was later revealed to be the largest money laundering caper in Philippine history.

Chinese hackers are possibly behind one of the world's biggest cyber heists, the theft of $81 million from the Bangladesh central bank, a senator in the Philippines says.