Santander Bank Hit by Major Data Breach, Customer Data Compromised

A notorious hacking group known as ShinyHunters is attempting to sell confidential data belonging to millions of Santander bank employees and customers. This cybersecurity incident follows the group’s recent claim of breaching Ticketmaster, a major ticket sales platform.

Santander, a global banking giant with over 200,000 employees worldwide, has confirmed that the attack had stolen data. The bank has apologized, stating, “we apologize for the concern this will understandably cause,” and is actively contacting affected customers and employees.

Scope of the Data Breach

According to ShinyHunters’ advertisement on Breachforums, the stolen data includes sensitive information such as:

• 30 million people’s bank account details
• 6 million account numbers and balances
• 28 million credit card numbers
• Human resources information for staff

Santander has not commented on the accuracy of these claims. However, the bank has stated that no transactional data or credentials that would allow unauthorized transactions were included in the breach.

Investigation and Response

In a statement, Santander revealed that the data breach affected customers from Santander Chile, Spain, and Uruguay, as well as current and some former employees. The bank has assured customers that its banking systems remain unaffected, allowing secure transactions to continue.

Cybersecurity experts have expressed caution regarding ShinyHunters’ claims, suggesting the possibility of a publicity stunt. However, researchers at Hudson Rock believe the Santander breach and the alleged Ticketmaster incident are linked to a major ongoing hack targeting a cloud storage company called Snowflake.

Snowflake has acknowledged “potentially unauthorized access” to a limited number of customer accounts, stating that hackers gained access using login information from a former employee’s demo account, which did not contain sensitive data.