Santander confirms data breach affecting customers around the world
Some Santander customers may have had their data stolen following a supply chain attack targeting one of the bank’s third-party suppliers.
The company confirmed the news in a breach notification letter to customers, which noted: “We recently became aware of unauthorized access to a Santander database hosted by a third-party provider.”
“We immediately implemented measures to contain the incident, including blocking the compromised access to the database and establishing additional fraud prevention controls to protect affected customers.”
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Further investigation into the incident revealed that the victims are customers from Santander, Chile, Spain and Uruguay. Unfortunately, localized Twitter accounts (Spain and Chile) contained no warnings or information about the breaches. However, there is a warning on the Chilean website.
Some of the stolen data belongs to some current and former employees. “Customer data in all other Santander markets and businesses will not be affected,” the company confirmed.
Santander has a presence in many countries around the world, including the UK, US and Mexico, with a total of more than 140 million customers.
The company did not explain who the threat actors were, what they were trying to accomplish, or what type of data they were stealing. It did say that transaction data, user data and other information that would enable financial transactions were not found in the compromised database and are therefore safe.
“The bank’s operations and systems are unaffected, so customers can continue to transact safely,” the report concludes.
The breach notification letter concludes with a mandatory apology for the inconvenience caused, and confirmation that affected individuals will be notified in due course. “We have also notified regulators and law enforcement and will continue to work closely with them,” Santander said.
Through BleepingComputer