3m Indian debit cards hacked: Are you affected here in UAE?

India's largest bank SBI advises customers to use own ATMs

Following a cyber security breach in the country's banking system, India's largest bank, the State Bank of India (SBI), has advised customers to use its own automatic teller machines (ATMs) for safe transactions.
An estimated 3,000,000-plus debit cards issued by various public or private banks are said to have been exposed to a potential risk of data breach.
More than 2.6m expat Indians live here in the UAE, and a majority transact monthly through their Indian bank accounts, including family support remittance and online shopping for their friends and family back home.
A senior SBI official said on Friday the bank is looking to replace within 10 days around 600,000 debit cards which were blocked by it as a preventive measure,=.
"We have set an internal target of seven to ten days for issuing the new debit cards to the customers whose cards have been blocked," said SBI Chief General Manager (Kolkata Circle) Partha Pratim Sengupta.
"We advise our customers to use SBI ATMs only at the moment for safe transactions," he said.
The lender on Wednesday said card network companies NPCI, Mastercard and Visa had informed various banks about a potential risk to some cards owing to a data breach.
"Accordingly, SBI has taken precautionary measures and blocked cards of certain customers identified by the networks. This is a proactive measure to protect our customers from any potential fraud once we came to know of some data breach outside our Bank," the bank said in a statement, adding that it was in the process of issuing new cards.
The malware-related security breach was reportedly detected in the non-SBI ATM network, following which the public sector lender blocked around 600,000 debit cards.

• Dubai