Arya News - Alerts from the Defence Cyber Agency and CERT-In prompted an investigation by an independent cybersecurity firm, while the bank maintained that its core services remained operational.
NEW DELHI – Personal information linked to 3,897 State Bank of India (SBI) customer records has surfaced on the dark web, prompting the country’s largest public sector lender to launch an investigation into a suspected data breach.
The disclosure follows an initial examination of approximately 3.75 lakh records available on the dark web.
While the bank has identified thousands of records containing personally identifiable information, investigators have yet to establish the source of the exposure or determine its full extent.
The information identified in the preliminary assessment includes customer names, registered mobile numbers, dates of birth, gender, email addresses and residential addresses.
Branch details, Customer Information File (CIF) identifiers, lead identification numbers and information associated with loan-related records were also among the exposed data, according to the bank.
SBI disclosed the incident to stock exchanges on Wednesday after receiving alerts from its threat intelligence service provider, the Defence Cyber Agency and the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In).
The lender said it had activated its cybersecurity response procedures and engaged an independent agency empanelled with CERT-In to examine the suspected breach.
The investigation will focus on verifying the authenticity and completeness of the records, tracing the possible source of the exposure and assessing the risks associated with the compromised information.
SBI says banking operations remain unaffected
Despite the exposure of customer information, SBI maintained that the incident had not materially affected its core banking operations, financial performance or business continuity.
The lender said its essential services were functioning normally and that remedial and preventive measures were being put in place.
The disclosure comes after an unidentified hacker group calling itself Siriusim claimed to possess confidential information allegedly linked to SBI customers.
The claim, circulated by cybersecurity monitoring account CyberPulse56 on social media platform X, referred to approximately 3.75 lakh data entries in comma-separated values (CSV) format and 2,722 portable document format (PDF) files.
The purported documents included loan applications, account-opening information and other customer-related records. The authenticity of the group’s claims has not been independently established.
SBI’s preliminary findings do not establish that all 3.75 lakh entries contain compromised personal information or that an equivalent number of customers have been affected.
The bank has yet to announce the outcome of its investigation or disclose whether additional customer records may be involved.