The chief executive of the UAE-based National Bank of Ras Al Khaimah has denied a claim by US prosecutors yesterday that an ATM-based "cyber-heist" resulted in $45m (£29m) of customer money being stolen.
"The bank can confirm that none of its customers suffered any financial loss as a result of this fraud," said the bank's chief executive, Graham Honeybill, as any amount at risk ($4.7m, Honeybill claims) was accounted for before the bank closed its 2012 accounts after the December 2012 attack.
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However, Honeybill has admitted that the attack may have "encompassed a number of banks not only in the Middle East but in the USA and other countries". US prosecutors believe banks in 27 countries were affected by what is thought to be the largest banking crime of this type in history.
The hackers are said to have targeted pre-paid credit cards from certain banks, which could explain how the National Bank of Ras Al Khaimah lost the money rather than its customers.
However, Costin Raiu, director of global research and analysis at antivirus firm Kaspersky Lab, said, "Nevertheless, it's a very serious incident and it raises a lot of questions about the security of the current payment systems.
"In US, the insecure magnetic stripe is still used when performing payments with cards; this has been mostly abandoned everywhere in Europe and replaced by the more secure chips."
Raiu believes it is imperative that all banks abandon the old-style cards for "a more secure solution".
"A lot of these attacks would go away by getting rid of the stripe and updating the US payment systems to use the chips," said Raiu.
