14 DAY TRIAL // Some of the customers of Romanian CEC Bank are being alerted by the financial institutions that they’re cards will be blocked and reissued along with their PINs after receiving numerous complaints about credit card details being leaked from the databases of an international company.
The company that suffered the data breach was not named, but according to Romania Insider, a number of 17,000 cards will be reissued to prevent potential fraudulent activities.
The institution suspects that the clients of other banks from Romania and additional countries may be affected as well, but no further details were provided.
“The bank has been informed that a number of cards issued by banks in Romania and abroad have been potentially compromised through an international database. CEC Bank has decided to block the cards and re-issue a new card and PIN number, at no cost, for a number of cards in its portfolio,” reads a statement on CEC Bank’s website.
“We apologize for the inconvenience, but considering the aforementioned facts, this action is purposed to protect the bank’s customers from the possibility of financial losses. This attack did not target CEC Bank’s cards alone and was not due to any bank vulnerability. Our clients’ money is safe.”
By the looks of it, it’s really hard to determine what company was targeted by the data breach that left all the consumers exposed. Since each week we come across tons of information leaked online by hackers from across the globe it’s hard to say who are the parties involved.
The measures taken by CEC are appropriate for such an incident and hopefully, the other banks and their customers are aware of the situation.
In these situations, it’s recommended for the individuals involved to closely monitor all their digital assets as it’s not uncommon for the data collected as a result of these operations to be utilized for other malicious purposes.