As of recently, two Canadian banks were hacked and the personal information of tens of thousands of customers was stolen. The people behind this hack are now threatening to publish the data online – unless the banks pay them $1 million in XRP.
According to the regional media outlet CBC News, the Bank of Montreal (BMO) and Simplii Financial were successfully breached over the weekend. This allowed the hackers to access data from more than 90,000 customers. The stolen information includes names, passwords, account numbers, security questions and answers, account balances and even social insurance numbers.
The hackers are currently holding the data for ransom and will dump it online unless the banks pay the $1 million in XRP, which is currently the fourth largest cryptocurrency by market cap.
The email by the hackers said:
“We warned BMO and Simplii that we would share their customers’ information if they don’t cooperate. These … profile will be leaked on fraud forum and fraud community as well as the 90,000 left if we don’t get the payment before May 28 2018 11:59PM.”
The hackers also explained that they breached the banks’ sub-par security by using an algorithm that generates account numbers and poses as customers who had forgotten their passwords. Their email appears to have been sent from Russia – and the attackers even included an example customer data set to confirm that they have gotten into the security protocols.
“Our practice is not to make payments to fraudsters,” was what the Bank of Montreal told the publication in a statement. “We are focused on protecting and helping our customers.”
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