SBI admits data leak, says records of 3,897 customers exposed on dark web

State Bank of India (SBI), the country's largest public sector bank, acknowledged for the first time on Wednesday that its customers' data had been leaked. The bank said records of 3,897 of its customers have been exposed on the dark web.

In an exchange filing, the bank said it had received information about a possible leak of customer data from its threat intelligence service provider, Defense Cyber Agency, and CERT-In.

According to SBI, an initial analysis was carried out of about 3.75 lakh records found on the dark web. Personally identifiable information (PII) was found in the records of 3,897 customers. The bank said the exposed files include customers' registered mobile numbers, dates of birth, names, gender, email IDs, home addresses, branch and CIF identification numbers, lead IDs, and metadata linked to loan and lead records.

The state-owned bank said it immediately activated its cyber incident response and control process as soon as it learnt of the incident. An independent cyber security agency accredited by CERT-In has been engaged for an in-depth investigation and an assessment of the possible damage. The bank said a detailed examination is under way into how genuine and complete the data on the dark web is, where it came from, how much data was exposed and what risks may be linked to it.

SBI clarified that the incident has had no major impact on its core business operations, financial performance or business continuity. All major services are running normally and there has been no disruption to customers' banking services. The bank said the necessary remedial and preventive steps are being taken to reduce the risk.

On the stock market, SBI shares were trading around 967 on the NSE at about 12:18 pm on Wednesday, down 0.61 per cent. According to exchange data, the stock's 52-week high is Rs 1,234.70 and its 52-week low is Rs 900.95. The share has fallen 13 per cent in the past six months, while it has returned 6.5 per cent over the past year. Over the past five years it has given investors a return of 92.30 per cent.

It is worth recalling that earlier this week a hacker group called SiriusSim claimed it had obtained confidential SBI customer data. According to the claim, this included personal information, loan applications and account-opening documents. A social media account that tracks cyber security, CyberPulse56, also shared the claim on X.

According to that post, the hacker group claimed to have obtained about 3.75 lakh data entries in CSV format and 2,722 PDF documents linked to the country's largest public sector bank.