ATMs in Lagos raided by hackers. Is your card PIN safe?

A large number of Automated Teller Machines ( ATMs ) located in some posh areas of Lagos like Victoria Island, Lekki Peninsula Phase I and II, and Ikoyi have been attacked by hackers and electronic fraudsters.

The hackers are said to be fixing small fraud tools on the ATMs in order to harvest the passwords of cardholders who come to collect cash or do some other transactions on the machines.

Top bank officials privy to the development said a number of banks had deployed detectives to monitor their ATMs in those locations, especially in the Victoria Island and Lekki axis.

A banker said “A number of the ATMs in Victoria Island and Lekki axis have been compromised by hackers. Some of these fraudsters visit those ATMs very late in the night or very early in the morning to fix some fraud devices on them, which are capable of collecting cardholders’ information, including their passwords.

“They come back later to remove the devices. The information collected is then used to commit fraud against those customers later.

“Most of us (banks) are aware of the development and we are very vigilant now. What some of us have done is to get a patrol team of security men to start combing the affected areas and the ATMs from time to time. We will get those guys soon.”

While some of the cardholders’ information collected by the fraudsters were being used to commit online-related frauds locally, a large number was used to clone ATM cards and used to shop in malls abroad, especially in the United States of America.

Rising cases of electronic frauds, especially ATM-related scams, which have made Nigerian banks to lose billions of naira in recent times, have forced some lenders to prevent their payments cards from working in the US, China and a few other countries.

According to Central Bank of Nigeria statistics, the banks lost N40 billion to electronic frauds in 2013 alone.

On January 19, 2015, the CBN ordered banks in the country to prevent payment cards (debit and credit) issued by them from working in fraud-prone countries, including the US, South Africa and China.

The central bank also said that banks would be liable for frauds committed abroad using cloned cards belonging to their customers.

The CBN said in a circular that from February 1, 2015, all the banks in the country must stop the payment/ATM cards from working in non-Europay, MasterCard and Visa countries.

It directed the banks to only activate the cards when customers to whom the cards had been issued were travelling abroad and this should only be for the period that the customers would spend overseas. 

Punch