Hackers Attack Citibank Pilfering over 200,000 Credit Card Customers' Personal Data
While more news on Rep. Anthony Weiner's (D-N.Y.) online sex scandal continues to appear, another hacking incident occurs, this time hackers broke into Citibank's computers stealing account numbers, names and contact information.
Citibank, one of the biggest 4 banks in the USA, discovered a data breach about a month ago that is said to have affected over 200,000 credit card customers.
Citibank said in a recent statement: "During routine monitoring, we recently discovered unauthorized access to Citi's account online," said Citigroup, in a prepared statement. "A limited number -- roughly 1% - of Citi bankcard customers' accounting information (such as name, account number and contact information including email address) was viewed."
Citibank has confirmed that customers' social security numbers, credit card expiration dates, card security codes (CCV number) and dates of birth were not compromised. Still, we believe that hackers have armed themselves with enough information to potentially conduct malicious actions against the victims. It is all-too common that we see cases where hacking events lead to spam and phishing campaigns that could later cause serious issues for those initially affected by a security breach.
After discovery of the breach, which what was thought to be security hole within one of Citibank's systems during the month of May, Citibank contacted police and tightened fraud procedures. They have now insured customers that they have taken proper precautions to prevent this from happening in the future.
No information has been released as to who the culprits may be in this hacking incident. Even though the hackers could not do much damage with the limited amount of information that was obtained, it still does not put some consumers at ease in knowing how vulnerable their data is stored on modern networks and servers that may be somewhat accessible via the Internet.
In just the past two weeks, we have witnessed two other hacking incidents, which one resulted in pertinent consumer data being stolen. It turns out that both previous occurrences were initiated from the same group of attackers who normally make public announcements of their actions. All of these recent events raise the question of whether or not we are on the verge of an outburst of hacking activities on a much larger scale. Despite the fact that banking institutions and networks that harbor a vast amount of important data have implemented enhanced procedures to prevent hacking attacks, these unfortunate incidents keep happening.
Do you trust your own bank with all of your personal information? What do you do to proactively keep yourself protected in the unfortunate event that your data is stolen in a data breach event?