What has happened?
The data of the users who have transacted from Hitachi ATM machines have been compromised during the month of May, June and July.
How have the banks reacted?
Since the data compromise took place from specific machines within a particular time period, it is just a limited issue and banks have asked their affected customers to replace their card or change their PIN. Other cards are not affected at all.
Who has been chiefly impacted
The Hitachi ATMs deployed by many White Label ATM and Yes Bank were impacted by a malware, but other ATMs were completely safe.
How did the problem come to the fore?
The genesis of the problem was receipt of complaints from a few banks that their customer’s cards were used fraudulently, mainly in China and the US when the customers were in India.
Extent of the damage
The complaints of fraudulent withdrawals are limited to cards of 19 banks and 641 customers. Rs 1.3 crore the total amount involved as reported by various banks.
60 crore Number of debit cards operational in India, of which 19 crore are indigenously developed RuPay cards. 41 crore are Visa- and Master Card-enabled.
DC Take:
Fiscal frauds and problems are nothing new to the society. However, with the emergence of plastic money a new problem lurks — digital data theft. It was only over the years that it was realised that though debit and credit cards have a high degree of convenience, they are not altogether safe.
They too are vulnerable to all sorts of cyber attacks. Over the years banks and other financial institutions concerned have for sure come out with various safeguarding measures, but the recent exposure of lakhs of cards has once again proved its inadequacy.
With increasing dependence on plastic money, government has to take concrete steps to ensure its safety too.
This incident should serve as a wake up call for both the banks and its customers.
On its part, it is imperative that all banks ensure that whatever information of the customers is entrusted with them is never ever accessed by wrong persons.
On their part, the customers should also acquaint themselves with complete knowledge of cards’ usage and how to go about it should any such situation arose in the future.
