Thousands hit by card fraud

ATM HACK: The card details of potentially thousands of residents have been stolen by a gang of fraudsters. Picture for illustrative purposes only. (Getty Images)

The card details of potentially thousands of UAE residents have been stolen by a gang of fraudsters who hacked into a bank's ATM machine, the central bank said in a statement on its website.

The central bank said it had provided lenders with a list of ATM cards used on the machine and advised all banks to block the affected cards immediately and either replace them or have users change their pin number.

The bank also advised lenders to check all their ATMs to make sure they had not been tampered with and there were no traces of an electronic reader, commonly known as a skimming machines.

The fraud took place between February 19 and 25. The fraudsters used a electronic reader to copy the data of all the cards used in the ATM and installed a small video camera to get users' pin numbers, the central bank said.

The statement, posted on the central bank's website on February 28, did not name the lender or the location of its ATM.

It is not known whether the gang has been caught, how much money had been stolen or the exact number of people affected.

ArabianBusiness.com tried to contact the central bank for further details but no one was available for comment.

Skimming attacks normally involve the placement of a fake card reader over the regular card reader in an ATM, which reads and records the data from the card's magnetic strip, while either a hidden camera or a nearby observer, known as a ‘shoulder surfer', steals the PIN.

The stolen details can then be used to create fake cards or make purchases online, or the data may be sold on to other gangs of fraudsters.

Skimming fraud has been seen in most regions of the world, and banks usually take measures to protect machines, such as installing plastic guards to prevent the installation of illicit card readers, camera monitoring of ATMs and regular inspections of machines.

Most skimming attempts now either target high usage ATMs for a very short period of time to steal the maximum number of card details in a short amount of time, or machines in out-of-the-way locations where the reader will not be detected as quickly.

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