MUMBAI: The Indian government's cyber watchdog is investigating how the computer systems of two companies that are part of the country's vast IT services industry were breached in a global ATM heist that saw $45 million stolen from two banks in the Middle East.
EnStage Inc, which operates from Bangalore, and ElectraCard Services, based in the Indian city of Pune, processed card payments for the two banks that were hit in the theft, several people familiar with the situation said.
"We are investigating the technical aspect," Gulshan Rai, director general of the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT), part of the department of electronics and information technology, told Reuters by phone on Sunday.
"What kind of breach has happened in the system, how did it happen, what processes are in place, and the entire technical aspect we will look at," he said, adding that the agency had started its investigation on Saturday.
US prosecutors said on Thursday that hackers broke into two card processing companies, raising the balances and withdrawal limits on accounts that were then exploited in coordinated ATM withdrawals around the world.
The prosecutors did not name the two companies but said one was based in India and the other in the United States.
According to a US official and a bank employee, who both spoke on condition of anonymity, ElectraCard Services was the company that processed prepaid travel cards for National Bank of Ras Al Khaimah PSC (RAKBANK). RAKBANK suffered a $5 million coordinated heist at ATMs around the world on Dec. 21 last year, according to the US indictment.
Ramesh Mengawade, the chief executive of ElectraCard Services and its parent company, Opus Software Solutions, could not be reached through his assistant or by email on Saturday.
ElectraCard is based in a plush office park near the airport on the outskirts of Pune, a fast-growing city in western India that is a hub for the IT and auto industries and is home to several universities. A security guard at the office park, where tenants include IBM, would not allow in a Reuters journalist without an appointment on Sunday.
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