Stolen data from’virtually all’Pakistan banks goes available for 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 important points available in forums on the dark web – an area of the net only accessible using specialist software.

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

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

More than 20, 000 users have been afflicted with the security breach, according to the FIA, with credit and debit card details from potentially 22 Pakistani banks among the information compromised.

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

“An interesting simple truth is that cards using this region are extremely rare on the [dark web] cardshops, ” the Group-IB report stated. “Previously six months it is the only one big sale of Pakistan cards.”

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