Your Tech Story

debit card

data leaked

Tension grows as over 100 million Credit, Debit Cardholders’ data leaked on the dark web

Tension grows among civilians as a security researcher discovers that the personal data of millions of cardholders’ have been compromised. According to this recent discovery, personal information like full name, email address, phone numbers, and the first and last four digits of the card has been revealed on the dark web. Due to this glitch, the bank account and other sensitive data of 100 million debit and credit cardholders are at stake.

The leakage of sensitive information on the dark web seems to have been caused by the platform of Juspay. Just pay is a digital payment service that processes transactions for many Indian and global multinational companies like Swiggy, Amazon, etc. With India getting accustomed to the digital payment system, there is a huge potential for phishing attacks if proper security is not established.

Nature of data leaked

It was cybersecurity researcher, Rajshekhar Rajaharia, who discovered the data leak last week on the dark web. He informed Gadgets 360 about the leaked data and that it was up for sale on the dark web by some hacker. According to the files shared with Gadgets 360, the data of the cardholders’ that has been leaked is between the time frame of March 2017 to August 2020. The data surfaced on the dark web included personal details of Indian cardholders. From customer IDs to the expiry date of the cards were fully visible on the site.

Apparently, the transaction details have not been leaked on the dark web. But, the information leaked is enough to cause phishing attacks by the hackers after combining the personal details available in the dump. Since the hacker put the information on the sale, Rajaharia also informed that the hacker was contacting buyers in Telegram for negotiation. The payment was demanded in Bitcoin.

Research on the data leak

Rajaharia on further research found that the hacker was selling the information on the dark web in the name of Juspay. The company on being contacted confirmed that there was a data leak in the month of August but didn’t provide any further details. Rajaharia continued his investigation and further verified the direct link of leaked data with Juspay. He received some of the dump sample files from the hacker which he compared with a Juspay API Document file. He said, “both were exactly the same.”

data leak

Juspay’s founder acknowledges the data leak

Vima Kumar, the founder of Juspay, informed Gadgets 360 that the company detected an unauthorized attempt on 18th August of this year. He further mentioned that it was terminated in progress. Kumar, in an email, claims that no personal data like card number, financial credentials, or transaction data was compromised. But he also accepted that data “Data records containing non-anonymized email, phone numbers and masked cards used for display purposes (contains first four and last four digits of the card, which is not considered sensitive), were compromised.”

Kumar mentioned that the masked card data which is non-sensible data for display leaked has two crore records. And the card vault is connected to a different PCI compliant system and it was never accessed. In response to this comment, Rajaharia said that the masked card numbers can be decrypted if a hacker figures out the algorithm used for the card fingerprints. Kumar defended his statement saying that Juspay does hundreds of rounds of hashing with multiple algorithms. These algorithms are not possible to reverse engineer even if given enough computing assets.

To prevent such attacks again Juspay has identified the security gaps in the company and made two-factor authentication (2FA) compulsory for all the tools accessed by the team members. However, it is hard to predict the capabilities of hackers these days after the recent data breach in the American government system that shook the internet.

Not even cybersecurity

Rajaharia is convinced that the security system of Juspay is still not strong enough. He said that there still exists a configuration issue on the company’s site that redirects its users to malicious websites. A company as big as Juspay which has around 50 million daily users including major clients like Swiggy, Airtel, Flipkart, Uber, etc should be more vigilant. The company holds the highest level of compliance given by the PCI Security Standards Council to such payment merchants. So now it is their responsibility to ensure the safety of its users.

Mastercard Logo

Ajaypal Banga: Mastermind Behind The Mega Success of MasterCard

Knowing about successful professionals is always inspiring. There are people in leadership and management niche who have created a path that is a dream of many to follow. One of such outstanding, talented professionals is Ajaypal Singh Banaga – The President and MasterCard CEO.

As a person, Ajaypal Banga is a gem but his life story is tremendously inspiring. Let’s know more about his success story.

Personal life of Ajaypal Banga

Ajaypal is born in 1960 in a small town near Pune, Khadki, where his father was working. Banga originally was from Jalandhar (Punjab). His father retired Lt. General, Harbhajan Singh was an army person. Thus, he got the chance to study all over India. He has been in schools in Secunderabad, Jalandhar, Delhi, Hyderabad, and Shimla.

Mastercard CEO- Ajaypal Banga
Image Source: Google

Ajaypal had no interest in an army career. Therefore, he preferred to study Economics. He went to St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University. Later, he completed his MBA from the IIM, Ahmedabad.

In fact, his entire educational journey was completed solely in India. He proved that you need not have to have degrees from other countries to climb the ladders of success.

Career

Ajaypal Banga began his career with Nestle India in 1891. He involved as a management trainee and resided in the company for 13 years. Doing different assignments including sales, marketing, and general management.

After Nestle, he joined PepsiCo’s Restaurants Division. Where he contributed significantly to the launch of Pizza Hut and KFC in India. Due to the lessening of government regulations related to the economy.

Earlier Achievements in Career

His career journey spanned many positions. In 1996, he was the head of marketing in India for the consumer business in Citicorp. In 2000 he served as head of CitiFinancial and the U.S. consumer assets division. In the next two years, in 2002 he became President of a retail bank in North America. Also, he was the head of Citigroup’s international consumer-banking and finance businesses.

In 2008, he moved to Hong Kong. Where he oversees all the bank businesses in Asia including credit cards and consumer banking, alternative investments, etc. He joined MasterCard in the US in 2009. In 2010, he took over as a Mastercard’s CEO.

Innovative Mastercard Journey

After joining Mastercard, one of his best clients helped him finding ways to encourage a number of youths to use debit cards. For that, he redesigned the debit card product with a bunch of features. For example, connecting it to the music. After so many trials, he fashioned a creative branding tactic with the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. This marketing method turned out to be a game-changer.

Challenge accepted

At that time, the areas of high-tech innovation, altering driving e-commerce, mobile and transit fares were challenging a bit. The other challenge was a group of young people in MasterCard Labs.

These creative people were honing new ideas and were trying to implant them for their clients. One such idea was scanning a bar code to make a purchase. He considered all the factors and his policies welcomed the best for Mastercard’s growth.

Prestigious Memberships

He showcased the best management skills at Mastercard. At that time, Ajaypal was also a part of a few prestigious associations-

  • The Economic Club of New York and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
  • President’s Advisory Committee for Trade policy and negotiations (Barack Obama appointed him)
  • Foreign Policy Association
  • Financial Services Roundtable
  • Business Roundtable – Chairman, Information and Technology Initiative.

Later Successes…

He also served as the boards of trustees of Enterprise Community Partners, Inc., and as a director of the Council for Economic Education. ‘The Economic Times of India’, awarded him as the fourth “Most Powerful Indian” in the world. It was the resultant of his keen interest and constant involvement in social issues. He received Padma Shri in 2016.

With Banga’s leadership, Mastercard has achieved various pinnacles. Presently, it is definitely one of the dream companies people aspire to be a part of.