Citigroup: the latest victim of high profile hackers

New York, June 10: A high-profile data thefts by hackers targeted some of the world's top known companies and presently the Citigroup Inc. have been victimised.

On Thursday, June 10, The New York bank said that around 200,000 Citibank account holders in North America had their names, account numbers and email addresses nabbed by hackers who broke into Citi's online account site.

According to Citi Group's 2010 annual report, it has more than 21 million credit card customers in North America. The Citi Bank said the account information about 1 percent of its credit card customers had been viewed by hackers. But, the bank failed to give the exact numbers of accounts that has been breached. Hence, the bank was contacting those victimsed customers.

"Both banks and regulators must remain vigilant," said Sheila Bair, chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

"Attackers have realized that most organizations have not properly protected databases," said John Ottman, CEO of Application Security Inc.

The citi hackers got only a few pieces of personal data on customers. The bank said hackers weren't able to gain access to social security numbers, birth dates, card expiration dates or card security codes, thats called identity theft, where cyber criminals empty out bank accounts and apply for multiple credit cards.

OneIndia News