The authorities have failed to identify the source of the problem, although they are speculating the observed activity in their cards from China.The report added that customers of SBI, HDFC Bank, ICICI, Yes Bank, and Axis are the most vulnerable, and earlier this week State Bank preemptively blocked debit and credit cards of certain customers in response to some warnings by card network providers about potential breach and risk to some cards.SBI said in a statement,”Card network companies NPCI, Mastercard and Visa had informed various banks about a potential risk to some cards owing to a data breach. Accordingly, we have taken precautionary measures and have blocked cards of certain customers identified by the networks.”
Mastercard has issued the following statement:
“We are aware of the data compromise event. To be clear, Mastercard’s own systems have not been breached. At Mastercard, safety and security of payments is a top priority for us and we are working on the investigations with the regulators, issuers, acquirers, global and local law enforcement agencies and third party payment networks to assess the current situation Mastercard is committed to implementing best practices and technologies to protect its customers financial institutions, consumers and merchants from fraud while ensuring their privacy is respected. Any concerned consumer should review their account statements and activity. If they suspect fraudulent or unusual transactions, we encourage them to contact the bank that issues their card for assistance and more information.”
Economic Times claim that the banks were alerted about the attack by Kaspersky Lab when they noted an offshore hacker attempted unauthorised access to Axis bank’s servers. The report claims that up till now no damage has been recorded, but the authorities are worried about the possibility of the hackers planting a virus in their server.
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