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.

[adrotate banner=”9″]

[adrotate banner=”12″]

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – OLB bank, cybercrime)

[adrotate banner=”5″]

[adrotate banner=”13″]

Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.