29 lakh debit cards faced malware attack last year

As many as 29 lakh debit cards, which were connected to Hitachi's switch, came under malware attack last year, Parliament was informed on Friday.

"As reported by commercial banks, 29 lakh cards used at ATMs that were connected to switch of Hitachi were subjected to malware attack," Minister of State for Finance Santosh Kumar Gangwar said in a written reply in the Lok Sabha.

However, the successful attempts of misuse of compromised cards reported to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) by banks was only 3,291, he said.

The RBI informed that the Hitachi Payment Services (HPS) appointed SISA Information Security for Professional Certified Investigator forensic investigation.

The final report suggested that the ATM infrastructure of the HPS was breached and the data between May 21 and July 11 last year was compromised, but not the point of sale infrastructure, Gangwar said.

The National Payment Corporation of India had informed that no independent investigation was carried out by them, he added.

The RBI has issued a comprehensive circular on Cyber Security Framework in Banks on June 2, 2016 covering best practices pertaining to various aspects of cyber security.

--IANS

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