INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
The cards of the cooperative bank customers that were cloned were of Visa and Rupay.PUNE: Hackers managed to transfer over Rs 94 crore
through a malware attack on the server of Pune-based Cosmos Bank and cloning thousands of the bank's debit cards over a period of two
days, a senior bank official said
The fraudulent transactions were carried out on August 11 and August 13 through 25 ATMs located in Canada, Hong Kong and a few in India
The cards of the cooperative bank customers that were cloned were of Visa and Rupay."A complaint has been filed with Pune police about the
malware attack and the bank is doing internal audits to investigate the breach," the official said.The bank maintained that the core banking
system (CBS) was not attacked and the malware attack was on the switch, which is operative for payment gateways of Visa and Rupay debit
cards."None of the customers' accounts were touched and it is the bank which has incurred the loss of this money," the official said.While
cloning the Visa and Rupay debit cards of bank account holders and using a "parallel" system to the National Payment Corporation of India
(NPCI), the hackers self-approved the transactions and withdrew over Rs 94 crore on two to three occasions, the official added."It was Visa
and Rupay who appraised about these fraudulent transactions to Reserve Bank," said the official.Realising the cyber attack, the bank then
registered an FIR with the Chatushringi police station.As a precautionary measure, the bank has closed all its servers and net banking
facilities, according to the official.According to the FIR, the hackers used an unidentified malware to hack the system and clone card
details of the bank customers."On August 11, the hackers cloned the card details and did over 12,000 transactions and transferred Rs 78
On the second instance, total 2,849 transactions were done in which Rs 2.5 crore was transferred within India," the FIR said.It also said
that on August 13, hackers again transferred Rs 13.92 crore in a Hong Kong-based bank by using fraudulent swift transactions.A case has been
for the headline, this story has not been edited by TheIndianSubcontinent staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
