India’s Big Debit Card Fraud: Beware, This Is Just the Beginning!

Recently, more than 3.2 million debit cards were reported to have been breached into by hackers, and what will concern you the most, is the manner in which the infiltration occurred.

ATM machines serviced and maintained by Hitachi Payment Systems, were compromised by a malware, infecting more than 50 ATMs in the country. This resulted in many account holders of HDFC, ICICI and Axis Bank among others reporting fraudulent money withdrawn from their account.

While this may not have caused a nationwide outcry, it’s hard to deny that the crux of the matter revolves around the current state of digital security. We quickly need to find a fix to safeguard our financial institutions and its supporting cast.

And with India slowly moving to the digital payments arena post demonetisation, cyber experts warn that incidents bigger than this could hit our banks and finances soon.

As scary as it may sound, if by 2018, our ATM machines are still found running on the outdated Windows XP, then we have no one else to blame but us.

70 percent of 2 lakh ATMs in India still run on Microsoft’s Windows XP operating system 

The lack of security at ATMs have been pointed out time and time again by experts of the domain, but we’re yet to see anything materialise that helps users feel confident about their money lying in the banks.

Who to Blame?

In the case of debit card breach, as this Livemint report points out, Yes Bank is the sole culprit for proliferating these incidents.

He feels that an attack on bigger banking institutions cannot be ruled out, especially when people’s money is slowly shifting to digital platforms.

He feels that the malware infected on the system could have entered physically by misuse of system, or by gaining remote access to the system.

Shinde believes that banks need to adopt stringent policies to tackle such attacks. They should focus on doing due-diligence of the parties involved and restrict control of third party companies like Hitachi Payment services.

Globally, we have seen large-scale heists done in the recent past. More than $80 million was stolen from Bangladesh Bank’s hacked computers, wherein payments are made via Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT).

All of this does sound scary, but with cause for optimism, Shinde and co highlight that banks need to improve its detection and response systems. Doing so, could help them avert a financial disaster that could have its ripple effect globally.