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Idiot Watch: Citibank Locks Down ATM Cards
John Stith
Staff Writer
2006-03-06
 Insider Reports RSS Feed
One of the largest banking chains in the world, Citibank ran a lockdown of ATM cards for customer traveling or otherwise in Canada, Europe or Russia. Apparently, the network had been hacked. Unfortunately, Citibank seems somewhat lacking as some reported Citibank failed to notify them before they used their card to attempt to retrieve money. Yep… the idiot watch sees something new.
The heavily trafficked site, BoingBoing, had an entry today regarding the complications by BoingBoing regular and Citibank customer Jake Appelbaum. It seems Mr. Applebaum was traveling in Toronto, Canada in recent days and attempted to utilize his Citibank card for a transaction at a local ATM.
To my surprise, the ATM machine rejected the transaction and urged me to contact my financial institution. The machine also reported on the receipt "INELIGIBLE ACCOUNT."
Applebaum did what any other person might do and contacted Citibank, inquiring about the situation. He said further:
The supervisor identified herself as a manager named Carla ID#CRU194. I identified myself as an upset customer whose account was locked for some unknown reason. She asked me a few questions about my location, my issue and then informed me that my card was suspected of fraud.
Naturally, I perked my ears up and asked for details of any fraud. She informed me that there had been no direct fraudulent transactions on my account. Rather, she informed me that the ATM networks of Canada, Russia and the United Kingdom have been compromised. I used the term class break as a question and she repeated that there has been a class break of the ATM networks in those countries. The ATM network in Canada has been compromised and as a result, using my ATM card over the Canadian network locked my account automatically. She informed me that this has been an ongoing issue for the last two weeks. When I asked why there was no media attention, she said she wasn't sure. I said it was a pretty big deal and she agreed.
She informed me that I would have to return to the United States to change my pin number before my card would be valid and in a usable state again. When I informed her that I would be traveling outside of the United States for at least a few months, possibly up to six, she repeated that I would have to re-enter the United States to fix the problem.
If these types of incidents were unique and rare, it would be a horrible situation, but unfortunately, poor security on behalf of banks and bank networks is becoming commonplace.
The other part of this story is Citibank's decision not to share this information with the general public, explaining that ATM networks in multiple countries had been compromised. All it took is one entry on BoingBoing, which is consistently one of the highest trafficked blogs on the net, to get hold of this story and it spreads quickly.
This still remains primarily a security problem, though it's turning into a public relations problem too. This is good example of Citibank's obvious lack of a solid contingency when security problems like this occur and that, inevitably, will happen again. They failed to notify customers, they failed to notify the media or anyone else. This is an excellent example of how not to handle a security problem like this.
This is the latest installment in the Idiot Watch. Stay tuned for more cases of stupid financial breaches as a result of banks and other financial institutions
Tag: Citibank
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About the Author:
John is a staff writer for SecurityProNews covering cyber security.
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