The global digital payments platform Revolut was recently the victim of a small-scale cybersecurity breach that gave the hacker unauthorized access to sensitive data of thousands of customers in Europe and Lithuania, TechCrunch reported.
According to Michael Bodansky, a spokesperson from the company, the personal data of approximately 0.16% of Revolut’s clients was compromised as a result of the incident. Hackers reportedly used “social engineering” techniques to access the firm’s systems. These schemes involve persuading an employee to hand over his security credentials.
The attack took place on 10 September and the firm managed to isolate the event to prevent hackers from further breaching the company’s systems. On its official website, Revolut claims that it has 20 million customers. Hence, the hack may have resulted in data from around 32,000 people being stolen.
“We immediately identified and isolated the attack to effectively limit its impact and have contacted those customers affected”, Bodansky stated.
Also read: Revolut Hires More Crypto Talent While Competitors Cut
The criminals have apparently started a phishing campaign by using the information they illegally obtained from Revolut. The company has been warning its customers to ignore and report if they receive any fake e-mails that could be used to obtain the access credentials of the person through bogus links and other similar mechanisms.
The firm sent an e-mail to the customers who were affected by the incident. A copy of the communication was shared by a Reddit user. In the e-mail, the company assured the affected parties that the breach did not result in the loss of funds but acknowledged that users whose information was stolen were at risk of being defrauded by these bad actors.
What is Revolut?
Revolut is a financial technology company that was founded in 2015 by two European entrepreneurs who wanted to make it easier for customers to send money to other people regardless of where they were.
Nowadays, the company offers an ample portfolio of products and services including money transfers, loans, stock and crypto trading, and insurance. The firm reportedly caters to over 20 million individual users and nearly a million business accounts.
Its payment platform supports more than 30 currencies and can be accessed from more than 200 countries. In 2021, the company managed to raise $800 million during a funding round co-led by SoftBank and Tiger Global that valued the firm at approximately $33 billion.
Revolut holds a license to provide payment services in the United Kingdom under the country’s Electronic Money Regulations of 2011 while the company also holds a banking license granted by Lithuanian financial authorities.
Microsoft and Uber Among Victims of Cybersecurity Breaches in 2022
This cybersecurity breach is the latest in a long list this year with hackers primarily targeting tech firms due to the vast amount of data they typically store from their customers. Recently, hackers from the Lapsus$ group managed to access some of the internal systems of Uber Technologies (UBER) and stole a large portion of the source code of Microsoft’s Bing search engine.
However, the most prominent thefts have occurred in the crypto space where an exchange and several crypto bridges have been accessed resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars being siphoned from their respective smart contracts.
Clients of the popular pure-play crypto exchange Crypto.com were victims of a theft that drained approximately $33 million in cryptocurrencies from customers’ accounts while hackers from the North Korean hacking group called Lazarus managed to siphon around $650 million from crypto investors after breaching Axie Infinity’s Ronin Bridge.
The personal data stolen from companies such as Revolut may include names, addresses, national ID credentials, and phone numbers from the victims. This data is typically used to conduct phishing campaigns or may be sold on the dark web to third parties.
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