Citibank PIN Hack: Deja Vu

If today's Associated Press report on the hacks of Citibank's ATM systems seems strangely familiar to you, don't worry. You're not losing your mind.

AP today reported that a hack of Citibank's personal identification number (PIN) system recently allowed attackers to steal as much as $2 million from the ATM network that serves 7-11 convenience stores. Although authorities still aren't sure how it was done, the network-based hack allowed the perpetrators to steal funds without touching any of the ATMs. Citibank officials said the attack occurred through a server at a third-party processing service.

The AP story makes the hack sound like breaking news, but it was actually reported -- in much greater detail -- more than a week ago in a report that appeared in Wired. A link to that story appeared in Dark Reading's Best of Web section.

More importantly, Citibank might be experiencing a sense of deja vu because a remarkably similar breach of Citibank's PIN systems occurred in March 2006. As in the case of the 7-11 attack, criminals broke into the Citibank PIN system through a third-party system and executed several hundred withdrawals, forcing the bank to shut down PIN-authenticated transactions in three countries.

— Tim Wilson, Site Editor, Dark Reading