Bank of Baroda initiates forensic investigation on data breach that leaked critical customer information

Public sector lender Bank of Baroda (BoB) has initiated a forensic investigation into breach of critical data that has reportedly leaked one TB (terrabyte) worth of data.

“A comprehensive forensic investigation has been initiated, and the bank is working closely with the relevant authorities in accordance with applicable regulatory requirements,” the bank said in its statement, a day after the data leak was informed by people through social media posts.

Going by the posts, the critical data of the banks was leaked into darkweb, a private internet network where users’ location information cannot be tracked and is not indexed in the World Wide Web.

“The bank has robust information security protocols in place. The incident involved compromise of an employee’s email account, resulting in unauthorised access to certain data. The matter was promptly identified, and immediate containment measures were implemented,” BoB said.

The bank’s core banking systems were not accessed and “continue to remain secure”, it communicated through a post on its official social media handle X.

The post seems to be in response to media reports and social media discussions claiming that over 1 TB of data, including personal Aadhaar details of customers, has been accessed in an unauthorised manner and posted on the dark web for free.

It was not immediately ​clear how many customers were affected.

The leak comes amid growing concerns ‌over cybersecurity risks facing large companies and financial institutions that store vast amounts of customer and business data.