Mumbai, Oct 21:
The State Bank of India (SBI) has confirmed a cyber incident involving the suspected exposure of personal information belonging to 3,897 customers on the dark web.
In a regulatory filing on Wednesday, the country’s largest public sector bank said a preliminary analysis had identified the customer records among approximately 3.75 lakh records found online. The bank is investigating the source and extent of the suspected data breach.
The exposed information reportedly includes customers’ names, registered mobile numbers, dates of birth, gender, email addresses and residential addresses. The records also contain branch details, Customer Information File (CIF) identifiers, lead IDs and metadata associated with loan applications and other related documents.
SBI received alerts about the suspected exposure on October 16 from its threat intelligence service provider, the Defence Cyber Agency and the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In).
SBI said its core banking operations, financial performance and business continuity had not been materially affected by the incident. The bank activated its cyber incident response and containment protocols and engaged an independent cybersecurity agency empanelled by CERT-In to conduct a comprehensive assessment.
The investigation will examine the authenticity and completeness of the exposed records, identify the possible source of the breach and assess the risks to customers and the bank.
The incident follows claims by an unidentified hacker group that it had obtained a large volume of SBI-related customer information. However, the authenticity and full extent of the data reportedly available online remain under investigation. SBI has not publicly identified the perpetrators in its disclosure.