Data of 300.000 Belfius Bank customers leaked online

The data of 300.000 Belfius Bank customers are being offered on a data breach forum, DataNews reported on Monday. The addresses and phone numbers of a handful of customers have already appeared online. Belfius, of of Belgium's largest banking institutions, says there are no indications of security problems or a data leak at the bank.

According to DataNews, a hacker offered the data of some 800.000 customers of a Spanish bank and 300.000 customers of a Belgian bank. Based on the test data released by the perpetrator, the magazine was able to deduce that these were Belfius customers.

The dataset includes a customer's first and last name, full address, phone number(s), date of birth, account number and IBAN. However, the sample data does contain several duplicate records, so the actual number of affected customers may be slightly lower. The list contains no financial details such as account balances or transactions.

The perpetrator claims that the data comes from call centres and has not been distributed before this year. Therefore, it is not clear whether the leak originated in a Belfius call centre (external) or came from another player who in turn contacted Belfius customers.

Those who would buy the data could, for example, pose as the bank and scam people via phishing emails or over the phone. A perpetrator could also pose as one of the victims to commit further identity fraud.

Belfius spokeswoman Ulrike Pommee reveals that Belfius is not aware of any data leak of customer data from the bank. "There are no indications of security issues or a data leak at Belfius," she said. "We are analysing this further in detail."

(BRV)

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