Over 3.2 Million Debit Cards May Have Been Compromised, Says National Payment Corporation of India

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Over 3.2 Million Debit Cards May Have Been Compromised, Says National Payment Corporation of India

By CircleID Reporter
October 20, 2016, 9:25 pm PDT Views: 5,421 Add Comment

A total of 3.2 million debit cards across 19 banks may have been compromised as a result of a suspected malware attack. The breach, possibly largest of its kind in India, was confirmed by the National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI) in a statement today. The problem was brought to NPCI’s attention via complaints from banks informing the agency that their customers’ cards were used fraudulently, mainly in China and USA, while customers were in India, according to the statement.

“How the breach could have occurred,” Alex Mathew reporting in Bloomberg: “The breach that has apparently given hackers access to the PIN codes of several bank customers is likely to be on account of a malware attack. This attack is believed to have originated at an ATM. The actual modus operandi of the hackers will only become clear once the forensic audit is released in November… First, the hacker would have had to gain physical access to an ATM. The malware was then likely injected by connecting a laptop or another special device to a port on the cash disbursing machine, said Tiwari, a consultant at Centre For Internet & Society in Bengaluru. Once the malware is injected, it automatically spreads across the network…”

By CircleID Reporter — CircleID’s internal staff reporting on news tips and developing stories. Do you have information the professional Internet community should be aware of? Contact us.
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