Banks' data hacking: SBP, FIA contradictory statements create confusion

KARACHI: Contradictory statements of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) and the State Bank of Pakistan over hacking of Pakistani banks’ data has created confusion and anxiety in the account holders, ARY News reported on Wednesday.

The FIA had earlier disclosed in a statement that the data of almost all Pakistani banks has been stolen by the hackers sitting outside of Pakistan. The FIA officials also said that the website of a Pakistan was also hacked.

The central bank spokesman , however, denied the incident of the banks’ data breach.

Rejecting media reports that the data of most banks has been hacked, the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) on Tuesday said that no evidence of banks data being hacked had been reported, except for one.

“There is no evidence to this effect nor has this information been provided to the SBP by any bank or law enforcement agency,” it said in a statement.

“We would like to emphasize that except for the incident of October 27, 2018 in which reportedly the IT security of one bank was compromised, no breach has been reported,” the central bank added.

The state bank said it had already instructed all banks to take steps to identify and counter any cyber threat to their systems in coordination with international payment schemes. Representatives of payment schemes had also assured that all steps were being taken to help banks in identifying any cyber threat on card systems and had offered additional controls to them, it said.

The reports about presence of the stolen bank data on dark web and its sale created a wave of anxiety among the customers of the banks.

There were reports about sale of thousands of hacked credit and debit cards of Pakistani banks on the dark web. According to a cyber security company the cards were sold at the price of 100 to 160 US dollars.

According to reports the data of overall 19,864 cards of Pakistani banks, was stolen by the cyber thieves.