Credit card hackers ‘on the prowl across GCC nations’

Banking customers in the Kingdom were among the victims as payment cards of a large number of them were compromised, a study has revealed. Nearly 140,000 compromised banking cards issued by the banks in the GCC were detected by Group-IB, an international company specializing in preventing cyber attacks.

The study revealed that stolen banking cards data of some Bahraini customers were put up for sale on underground forums or used in further fraudulent activities. The international company, Group-IB, along with Bahrain-based global system integrator, NGN International, recently analyzed the cyber-security landscape of Gulf countries in 2018.

According to them, Gulf countries including Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) came under the spotlight of cybercriminals increasingly often. The Group-IB Threat Intelligence team detected a total of 138,978 compromised cards issued by Gulf countries’ banks.

The data is the result of analyzing not only underground forums and phishing websites, but also cybercriminals’ infrastructure and malware disassembling, the company said. “The Group-IB Threat Intelligence team detected a total of 138,978 compromised cards issued by Gulf countries’ banks.

The data is the result of analyzing not only underground forums and phishing websites, but also cybercriminals’ infrastructure and malware disassembling,” Group-IB and NGN international said in a joint statement.