Hackers steal money from 20,000 Tesco Bank accounts

Nearly 20,000 Tesco Bank customers had their accounts robbed in what is seen as the most serious hack on the UK banking sector in recent history.

The bank said it was working hard to refund all affected customers after fraudulent withdrawals from 20,000 of its 136,000 current accounts over the weekend. Also suspicious activity had been seen across 40,000 of its customer accounts.

Online transactions had been temporarily frozen as part of emergency security measures.

Without disclosing the total amount that had been stolen from the accounts, a spokesman said the incident was currently being treated as a "criminal investigation".

"Tesco Bank can confirm that, over the weekend, some of its customer current accounts have been subject to online criminal activity, in some cases resulting in money being withdrawn fraudulently," chief executive Benny Higgins said in a statement.

He added that customers affected by the block would still be able to withdraw cash and use other services like chip and pin payments, while bill payments and direct debits "will continue as normal".

Apologising to customers, he added that the bank would  refund customers as soon as possible.

"We can reassure customers that any financial loss as a result of this activity will be resolved fully by Tesco Bank. This afternoon we began the process of refunding all customer current accounts that have been subjected to online criminal activity and we expect this process to be completed by the end of tomorrow."

According to one cybersecurity expert, this could be an unprecedented breach at a UK bank.

"I've not heard of an attack of this nature and scale on a UK bank where it appears that the bank's central system is the target," said Prof Alan Woodward, a security consultant who has worked with Europol, bbc.com reported.