Source: Techweb.com
So it looks like a simple pin code was supposed to make credit cards, debit cards, and ATMs super secure. "1337" ("leet-speak" for the word elite) hackers proved this was really a false sense of security and opened a floodgate to people's hard earned money.
The unfolding debit card scam that rocked Citibank this week is far from over, an analyst said Thursday as she called this first-time-ever mass theft of PINs "the worst consumer scam to date."
Wednesday, Citibank confirmed that an ongoing fraud had forced it to reissue debit cards and block PIN-based transactions for users in Canada, Russia, and the U.K.
"That's the irony, the PIN was supposed to make debit cards secure," Litan said. "Up until this breach, everyone thought ATMS and PINs could never be compromised."
From the sound of things, this situation may be far worse than the companies effected are letting out to customers.
But Citibank is only the tip of the iceberg, said Avivah Litan, a Gartner research vice president. The scam--and scandal--has hit national banks like Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Washington Mutual, as well as smaller banks, including ones in Oregon, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, all of which have re-issued debit cards in recent weeks.
"This is the worst hack ever," Litan maintained. "It's significant because not only is it a really wide-spread breach, but it affects debit cards, which everyone thought were immune to these kinds of things."
Watch your accounts closely over the following weeks. Something tells me this "Pandora's Box" in the credit card system may be far from over.
Score: hackers 20, banks security 0.
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