In October 2016, Indian banks disclosed that malware injected into Hitachi Payment Services’ ATM and point-of-sale infrastructure had compromised as many as 3.2 million debit cards. The intrusion went undetected for approximately six weeks. Fraudulent withdrawals and transactions were first identified after international banks reported cards being used in China and the United States while their Indian customers were at home. The National Payments Corporation of India reported losses of nearly ₹13 million, about US$195,000 at the time.
State Bank of India, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, YES Bank and Axis Bank were among the institutions affected. SBI blocked and reissued approximately 600,000 cards, one of the largest replacement operations in Indian banking. The episode exposed weaknesses in the monitoring of a critical payments intermediary and demonstrated how compromise of shared banking infrastructure could spread across otherwise separate financial institutions. The source does not identify a final public attribution or criminal resolution.
