Rare breach at a traditional bank: Taiwan's Bank SinoPac 419 Funds of several customers were transferred out of thin air, exceeding 4,000 ten million New Taiwan dollars; FSC: whether hackers were involved remains under investigation

Techub News According to Taiwan's Central News Agency, Wang Yun-chung, deputy director-general of the Banking Bureau of Taiwan's Financial Supervisory Commission, said today that Bank SinoPac received reports from customers that without logging into the new version of the mobile banking app, funds were transferred out of their accounts; after comparison by Bank SinoPac, the abnormal transactions totaled 427 transactions, each about NT$ 10 ten thousand, totaling more than 4,000 ten million (about 120 million US dollars), affecting 419 customers, with all funds transferred to the same account at a peer bank, which has been temporarily frozen. Bank SinoPac has returned the funds to customers by way of advance payment and has taken down the new version of the mobile banking app, and must submit a major incident report to the Financial Supervisory Commission by 11 month 12 date. SinoPac Financial Holdings announced in the evening on Taiwan's Market Observation Post System that the incident stemmed from a program anomaly in the "new online banking transaction system," that the cause has now been identified and the service suspended, and that no similar situation has occurred since, with all funds including fees fully returned to customers. The Financial Supervisory Commission said it remains to be verified whether the issue was an app problem or a hack.