A recent cyber attack on the Citigroup financial services company resulted in the loss of $2.7 million from the credit cards of about 3,400 of the company's customers. The Wall Street Journal reports that the number of credit cards that had money stolen due to the cyber attack was still less than one percent of the 360,069 credit cards that were affected by the attack. Citigroup has a total of 23.5 million credit card accounts in the US.
The hack, which happened back in May but was only first reported by Citigroup in early June, did not expose customer data like Social Security numbers, birthdays, credit card expiration dates and credit card security codes, according to Citigroup. The attack did, however, expose other types of customer data like account numbers, names and email addresses, data which could be used to obtain services and products illegally by hackers. The story states that all of the 3,400 customers directly affected by the attack will have their financial losses compensated by the company. The amount of money lost due to the attack is about $794 per customer. Citigroup also said it has replaced 217,657 credit cards for customers affected by the attack. There is still no word as to how the online security breach occurred.
Even with the $2.7 million lost as a result of the Citigroup cyber attack, the story points out that price tag pales in comparison to the $48 billion in annual total losses due to identify theft crimes.
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