29 Axis Bank accounts hacked, which includes Mumbai police officers'

 

A total of 29 Axis Bank accounts, including 12 salary accounts of Mumbai police personnel, were hacked in April and May.

Agency reports quoting the police said a sum of Rs 13 lakh was withdrawn through ATMs in Greece from 29 accounts.

Some of the policemen in the city had received SMS messages that cash has been withdrawn from their Axis Bank accounts in euro currency, it said.

An Axis Bank spokesperson said, “A small number (less than 50) of our customers’ accounts have been impacted through transactions at compromised ATMs in Mumbai ‘belonging to multiple banks’.

“We have reversed the impact in all such customers’ accounts with immediate effect to ensure they are not inconvenienced. We are undertaking a full investigation into the incident and are working closely with law enforcement officials in this regard.”

According to Govind Rammurthy, MD and CEO, eScan, there is also a possibility of customers being victims of skimming and / or card cloning. Since all the account holders were from the same bank, it is likely that there exists a rogue skimmer which targets the customers of the bank.

Alternatively, there may also exist a card cloning racket that swipes the cards of the users with the intention of grabbing the card-data, he said.

Police claimed that the debit cards have been cloned and the withdrawal done in Greece. An FIR will be lodged soon in this connection, it is said. 

The Police have also formed a team, led by a DCP, to investigate the episode. The bank too has been asked to look into the details and subsequently submit a report.

Worrying as it is, instances of hacking are a fairly common occurrence, but this particular instance is an indicator of the fact that miscreants are getting bolder with their targets each time.
A report by Akamai Technologies last month found that India stood in eighth place with 2.3 percent of the world’s hacking attack traffic coming from our country during the fourth quarter of last year. India’s share in the hacking space has decreased from 2.5 percent in the Q3 and 3 percent in comparison to the year-ago period.
In a separate instance, figures by Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) in December last year revealed that more than 14,000 websites have been hacked by cyber criminals.