Qatar National Bank admits leaked financial data on customers 'may be accurate'

Following the leak of 1.4GB-worth of sensitive financial customer data, the Qatar National Bank (QNB) has admitted some of the compromised information "may be accurate".

On 25 April, a leaked file emerged that purported to contain names, addresses, credit card data and National ID numbers of QNB customers. Within the trove of data dozens of separate files and folders appeared to also list sensitive information on Al-Jazeera journalists, the Al-Thani Royal Family and even members of the country's security services.

Now, in a statement sent to IBTimes UK, the bank has said: "While some of the data recently released in the public domain may be accurate, much of it was constructed and contains a mixture of information from the attack as well as other non-QNB sources, such as personal data from social media channels.

"We believe the nature of this incident is fundamentally an attempted attack on QNB Group's reputation and not specifically targeted at our customers.

"QNB Group's Risk Team monitored abnormal activity in our system environment and this was immediately communicated to relevant authorities. We also took immediate steps and our systems are fully secure and operational. The attack only targeted a portion of Qatar based customers."

IBTimes UK, which has reported extensively on the breach, was able to independently verify a number of the records in the data dump. Only 24 hours after the leak, this publication received first-hand reports that hackers were already attempting to exploit the sensitive financial information.

However, according to the latest statement from QNB claimed the leak will "have no financial impact" on its customers. The bank added: "We believe the nature of this incident is fundamentally an attempted attack on QNB Group's reputation and not specifically targeted at our customers."

'Deep regret'

The statement continued: "All our customers' accounts are secure, and as always, we encourage customers to be vigilant, taking the usual precautions of frequently changing their usernames and passwords through QNB Group internet banking.

"We deeply regret any inconvenience this may have caused to our customers. We at QNB Group place the highest priority on data security and deploy the strongest measures possible to ensure we maintain your trust and the integrity of your information."

Most recently, a computer scientist launched a website that allows any concerned customers of the bank to check if their details are included within the compromised financial data.