Hacked UAE bank at the center of ATM heist uses Infosys Finacle Software

MUMBAI: National Bank of Ras Al Khaimah PSC (RAKBANK) of the United Arab Emirates, which was one of the two banks that were defrauded in the $45 million (Rs 247 crore) global ATM heist, uses Infosys' Finacle banking software.

US federal prosecutors said in a complaint last week that RAKBANK and Bank of Muscat Oman were hacked by a global cyber-crime ring, that first breached the computers at an outsourced Indian credit card processor in December and then the computers of a similar American processor to gain access to critical data that made the crime possible.

It could not be verified if Infosys does credit card processing for the bank or if the Bangalore-based outsourcer merely sold its banking software. Infosys declined to comment for this story. The prosecutors did not name the Indian companies whose systems were breached. ET could not immediately establish who the bank's other service providers were.

The Middle-East bank finished implementing the Finacle core banking solution in January this year, and 700,000 customers had migrated to the new solution since Juny 2012, the company said in a statement in January. "The core banking solution supports more than 325,000 accounts and facilitates an average of 250,000 transactions daily across RAKBANK's various branches," the bank had said in a January 7 statement.

The heist, which was predicated on the breach of an Indian outsourcing company, comes at a time when the sector is facing immense scrutiny about its cyber-security.

India has threatened to stall a Free Trade Agreement with Europe, unless given a Data Secure Status, which would help the country attract more work from that continent. The European Union has been unwilling to give India the status given the lack of enforcement, accountability and penalty guidelines in the country's existing Information Technology rules.