A simple spelling mistake prevented hackers to get away with nearly one billion American dollars, a heist that involved the Bangladesh Bank and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York – and had it been successful – would make it one of the biggest bank thefts in history.

The hackers "only" got away with $80 million, although some of the sum now has been recovered.

The hackers breached Bangladesh Bank's systems and stole its credentials for payment transfers, two senior officials at the bank said. They then bombarded the Federal Reserve Bank of New York with nearly three dozen requests to move money from the Bangladesh Bank's account there to entities in the Philippines and Sri Lanka, the officials said.

Four requests to transfer a total of about $81 million to the Philippines went through, but a fifth, for $20 million, to a Sri Lankan non-profit organization was held up because the hackers misspelled the name of the NGO, Shalika Foundation.

Hackers misspelled "foundation" in the NGO's name as "fandation", prompting a routing bank, Deutsche Bank, to seek clarification from the Bangladesh central bank, which stopped the transaction, one of the officials said.

Featured image: From the hacking documentary "In Search of the Most Dangerous Town on the Internet" directed by Sean Dunne.