ElectraCard: data in fraud compromised outside its environment

MUMBAI (Reuters) - ElectraCard Services said on Sunday that a data breach in a series of ATM fraud attacks in December appears to have happened outside of its "processing environment."

According to a U.S. official and a bank employee, who both spoke on condition of anonymity, ElectraCard Services was the company that processed prepaid travel cards for National Bank of Ras Al Khaimah PSC (RAKBANK). RAKBANK suffered a $5 million coordinated heist at ATMs around the world on December 21 last year, according to the U.S. indictment.

ElectraCard (ECS) said investigations show that "the PIN and Magnetic stripe data seem to have been compromised outside the ECS processing environment."

It added in a statement: "As already reported in the media earlier this year, there were fraud attacks which affected several institutions worldwide, including ECS, in December 2012."

(Reporting by Tony Munroe; Editing by Daniel Magnowski)