Crooks stole €1.5 million from German bank OLB cloning EMV cards

Criminals have stolen more than €1.5 million from the German bank OLB by cloning customer debit cards and using them to cash out user funds across Brazil.

ZDnet first reported that last week cyber criminals have stolen more than €1.5 million from the German bank Oldenburgische Landesbank (OLB) by cloning customer debit cards and using them to cash out user funds across Brazil. The experts pointed out that the cards were cloned even if they were protected by EMV (chip-and-PIN) technology.

According to a statement released by the bank on Friday, August 27, the incident only involved Mastercard debit cards issued by OLB for 2,000 customers. All the impacted customers were already refunded by the German bank that also blocked the Mastercard debit cards.

The OLB bank confirmed that the incident is not the result of a data breach, it also speculates the involvement of an “organized cybercrime involving counterfeit cards and terminals.”

“We can confirm that neither Mastercard’s network or the EMV technology were compromised,” a Mastercard spokesperson said. “Nor has any account or card data been hacked either at Mastercard, OLB or at a third party. This issue derived from a scam involving organized cybercrime using counterfeit cards and terminals.”

The fact that the incident involved a Brazilian crime group is not a surprise because the county hosts the most prolific crime gangs focused on cloning EMV-based cards.

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – OLB bank, cybercrime)

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