New Delhi, 21 October 2026: A shocking incident has come to light regarding the security of personal information of the customers of 'State Bank of India', the country's largest public sector commercial bank. State Bank of India has officially confirmed that a preliminary analysis of approximately 3,75,000 records found on the dark web has revealed that personal and sensitive information of 3897 of its customers has been leaked. After receiving an alert from national cyber security agencies on October 16, the Bank immediately activated the Cyber Incident Response Protocol and conducted a detailed investigation into the matter.
SBIA has said in its regulatory filing to the stock exchanges that it had received an emergency alert regarding a possible data leak on October 16. These warnings were given by the Bank's Threat Intelligence Service Provider, Defense Cyber Agency of the Defense Ministry and the country's nodal cyber safety agency 'Cert-In'. Based on this alert, a rapid analysis of the data available on the dark web was done, in which it was confirmed that the records of 3897 customers contained personal details.
According to preliminary investigation, personal details of customers like registered mobile number, date of birth, full name, gender, email ID and residence address have been leaked in the data set found on the dark web. Apart from this, banking and branch data such as branch code, customer information file ID, lead ID, metadata related to loan/lead records and other digital files are also found to be included in this data set.
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'SeriousIm' hacker group's claims and revelations on social media
This entire matter came to light after the claim of an unknown hacker group named 'SiriusIm'. This group had claimed to have stolen confidential data related to SBI, loan applications and documents for opening accounts. Cyber security watchdog account 'CyberPulse56' on social media platform 'X' first made this claim on October 16. According to him, the hacker group is estimated to have approximately 3.8 lakh data entries and 2722 PDF documents in CSV format.
As soon as the data leak was known, SBIA took strict action as per protocol. The Bank has appointed an independent cyber security agency accredited by CERT-In to thoroughly investigate the incident and conduct a risk assessment for its customers. The bank has clarified in its official statement that this incident has not had any adverse impact on the bank's core banking operations, financial operations or business continuity. SBI's core banking system and day-to-day services are completely secure and functioning normally.
This incident highlights the seriousness of the cyber security threats facing the Indian financial sector, especially at a time when the Reserve Bank of India has made cyber security regulations more stringent for all banks. SBIA has assured the customers that it is continuously monitoring the entire situation and necessary corrective and preventive measures are being taken based on the report of the independent investigating agency.