A cybersecurity company in Singapore found a dump that contained approximately 400,000 payment card records on the dark web. The records were related to banks and financial organizations based in South Korea and the US. It is also the most significant sales record of South Korea on the dark web in 2020. The incident has also contributed to the popularity of APAC-issued card dumps availability on the dark web.

The relevant cybersecurity authorities of South Korea and the US were notified about the situation so that they can take necessary measures to halt the impact of this incident.

South Korean Payment Card Users Face Huge Risks

The exact total number of exposed records is 397,365. Even though there is not a single mention of South Korea in the database, the South Korean card details are available in considerable numbers in the newly released batch. Approximately 49.9% of the leaked and sold data was from South Korean banks and financial organizations. The remaining 49.3% of payment card record data was related to US banks and commercial organizations.

Till now, the US card dumps were very common on the dark web as compared to the very rarely found South Korean card payment record dumps. However, the newly released database indicates the biggest sale records dump of South Korean cards in 2020. The incident which has put South Korea as the leader of massive credit card dumps on dark web happened eight months ago.

Payment Card Dumps and Sales on Dark Web

In the past few years, APAC-issued card dumps are increasingly getting dark web sales offers. By 2019, the APAC-Issued card dumps had become the second most popular target in the underground due to their abnormally dark web sales trends that even surpassed the all-time champion – the US. The increase in the supply of APAC-issued card dumps has pressured the market to lower their prices for US credit card dumps.

In October 2019, several APAC-issued credit card dump incidents were reported that contained sales records of more than 1.3 million credit and debit card users’ information of Indian Bank’s customers. Some reports indicated card dumps databases coming from Pakistan, which were traded in large volumes during February 2019 and November 2018 on the dark web.

In Short

Such a high frequency of payment card data dumps and dark web sales indicated a dire need for preventive measures that shall be taken on behalf of payment card issuing authorities and cyber-security regulations. As a user, you can never be too careful about your card’s safety as someone might always be on the run to steal your information.