A banker who spoke with Punch 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 those 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.
Also
confirming the report, the Vice-Chairman, Committee of e-Banking
Industry Heads, Mr. Dele Adeyinka said banks have recently installed
anti-skimming devices on their ATMs so as to checkmate such illicit
activities.
“Yes, it is true that hackers are carrying out
those activities. It is not only in Victoria Island axis, they are doing
it everywhere. But all the banks have complied with the CBN directive
on anti-fraud tools. So, it will be difficult for those fraud devices to
work.”he said
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 US.
As
a way to checkmate the activities of these fraudsters, the Central Bank
of Nigeria in January this year issued a directive to all Nigerian
banks to prevent payment cards (debit and credit) issued by them from
working in fraud-prone countries, including the US, South Africa and
China and that they would be liable for any fraudulent transaction
carried out in those countries using a customers cloned ATM card. The
CBN in another circular released on February 1, 2015, instructed all
Nigerian banks to stop the payment/ATM cards from working in
non-Europay, MasterCard and Visa countries. The circular stated that ATM
cards that would work in designated countries must be activated only
during the period the customer would be spending outside Nigeria.
The
circular which was signed by the Director, Banking and Payment System,
CBN, Mr. Dipo Fatokun, reads in part, “The occurrence of card present
frauds in non-EMV environments is on the increase, especially when
international hybrid cards issued by Nigerian banks are used in non-EMV
environments like the USA. It has, therefore, become necessary for the
CBN to issue the following directives and that all DMBs should do the
following: collate all their card frauds abroad and send to the CBN not
later than January 30, 2015; subsequently, all data on card frauds
occurring abroad should be rendered on the NIBSS fraud portal; implement
anti-fraud solution on their card management systems not later than
January 30, 2015; ensure that from February 1, 2015, only customers that
expressly indicated the intention of travelling to non-EMV
jurisdictions would have their cards default to the magnetic stripe and
for the period indicated by the cardholder only.”