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Cybercriminals stole more than € 1.5 million from the German bank Oldenburgische Landesbank (OLB) using fake bank cards. Attackers cloned debit cards of about 2 thousand OLB customers and withdrew money from their accounts in Brazil. The criminals successfully managed to carry out the operation, although the cards were protected using the EMV standard.
The incident took place last week. The cybersecurity experts were immediately struck by the fact that the attackers used clones of only MasterCard debit cards issued by OLB.
According to a press release published by OLB on August 27, the bank has already returned all funds to the affected customers, has blocked the MasterCard debit cards and is preparing a replacement for them. According to a press release, the theft was the result of the actions of an "organized cybercriminal group using fake cards and terminals." The bank also denies rumors circulating in the German media about hacking OLB computer systems.
It would seem that EMV technology protects bank cards from cloning, so it is impossible to fake them. Nevertheless, as practice shows, nothing is impossible, and similar incidents have already occurred in the past.
According to a Kaspersky Lab report for 2018, Brazilian cybercriminals have succeeded in cloning EMV cards. As Telefonica’s IB security expert Manuel Pintag told ZDNet, Mexico and Brazil are “the largest EMV card cloning labs.”
According to Pintag, to clone a valid EMV card, it’s enough to have a copy of its magnetic tape. To obtain it, criminals usually use a special device that is inserted into an ATM or PoS terminal. It seems that such a device was used to clone OLB cards.
According to the report of Kaspersky Lab, the presence of a PIN code is optional, and some cloned cards work with any code entered on the keyboard of an ATM or PoS terminal.
According to representatives of MasterCard, neither their networks, nor EMV technology, nor any accounts or data were compromised, and the criminals used fake cards and terminals.
EMV (Europay + MasterCard + VISA) is an international standard for operations with bank cards with a chip. It was originally developed jointly by Europay, MasterCard and Visa in order to increase the security of financial transactions.