State Bank of India (SBI) has not said whether customers living abroad appear in a dark web dataset under review after its initial examination found 3,897 records containing personal information.
In an Oct. 21 stock exchange filing, the bank said it screened about 375,000 records, as EconoTimes previously reported. The 3,897 figure counts records, not distinct customers. SBI is still checking whether the material is authentic.
India’s Ministry of External Affairs estimates that about 4.34 million Indians live in the United Arab Emirates. That population figure does not establish how many hold SBI accounts. The bank has not disclosed whether any nonresident customers were affected, including people living in the UAE.
SBI said it received alerts from its threat intelligence provider and two Indian agencies: the Defence Cyber Agency and the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In). Separately, the cybersecurity account CyberPulse publicized an Oct. 16 claim by a group called Siriusim that it held data linked to the bank. That claim has not been verified.
Gulf News listed names, contact details, addresses, customer identifiers and loan-related information among the data reportedly found in the records. SBI did not list passwords, PINs or one-time passwords among the reported fields. Its investigation has yet to establish where the material came from or how widely it circulated.
The Internet Freedom Foundation, a digital rights group, has asked SBI to notify affected customers and explain what information was involved. It warned that personal and loan details could help someone pose as a bank employee, but reported no fraud tied to this incident. SBI’s filing did not say whether customers had been contacted.
SBI said the incident had not materially disrupted its services or affected its financial performance. It has hired an independent cybersecurity firm approved by CERT-In to assess the records and investigate the incident. SBI has not announced when it expects that work to conclude.
