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Revolut app valued at $33 billion
Photo: Monika Skolimowska / dpa
The British smartphone bank Revolut claims to have been the victim of a cyber attack.
This emerges from a communication from the fintech to the supervisory authorities in Lithuania.
Revolut operates in Europe with a banking license from Lithuania.
In Germany, Revolut competes with neo-banks like N26.
The app enables, among other things, transfers, investments and cryptocurrency trading.
Company spokesman Michael Bodansky told TechCrunch that "an unauthorized third party gained access to the data of a small percentage (0.16 percent) of our customers for a short period of time."
Revolut discovered the malicious attack late in the evening of September 11 and was able to isolate the attack by the next morning.
The notice to regulators in Lithuania said Revolut's security team acted quickly to stop access to the company's customer data.
Revolut now warns of phishing attempts
The Revolut spokesman declined to say exactly how many customers were affected.
On its website, the company states that it has around 20 million customers;
0.16 percent would correspond to about 32,000 customers.
However, in Revolut's communication to the Lithuanian authorities, the company states that 50,150 customers were affected by the security breach.
And there is another contradiction: In a message to affected customers that was posted on Reddit, the company announced that "no card data, PINs or passwords were tapped".
However, the agency's statement says the hackers likely accessed some of the card payment details, as well as customers' names, addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers.
It is not yet clear what the target of the attack was.
In any case, there is no talk of blackmail with ransomware.
Rather, Revolut warns its customers of phishing attempts that someone could carry out with the copied data.
As a precaution, the start-up emphasized that it would never call or text customers to ask for log-in data or the like.
Such incidents are taken "incredibly seriously", quotes "TechCrunch" Bodansky, the security of customers and their data is "top priority at Revolut".
After a funding round last year in which Revolut secured $800 million, the start-up is valued at around $33 billion.
pbe/dpa