Stolen data from’almost all’Pakistan banks goes on sale on dark web

Hackers sole customer data from “virtually all major Pakistani banks” and placed it on the dark web, the country’s cyber-crime chief has revealed.

The comments from Mohammad Shoaib, director of Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), follow a report from cyber security firm Group-IB that private bank data have been compromised. Group-IB discovered the details for sale in forums on the dark web – a portion of the web only accessible using specialist software.

“Virtually all [Pakistani] banks’data has been breached. In line with the reports that we have, most of the banks have been affected, ” Mr Shoaib told Geo News.

“More than 100 cases [of cyber attacks] have been registered with the FIA and are under investigation. We have made several arrests in case, including that of an international gang.”

More than 20, 000 users have now been afflicted with the security breach, in line with the FIA, with credit and bank card details from potentially 22 Pakistani banks among the info compromised.

Cyber criminals have previously cashed out $2.6 million from foreign ATMs, according to the Group-IB report, mirroring the same attack earlier in 2010 during which hackers syphoned a lot more than 940 million rupees (£10.5 million) from ATMs round the world.

“A fascinating truth is that cards out of this region are extremely rare on the [dark web] cardshops, ” the Group-IB report stated. “In the past half a year it’s the only one big sale of Pakistan cards.”

In a separate interview with Dawn News TV, Mr Shoaib said it was the responsibility of the banks to guard their customers’data.