2023 SBI — ~12K employee records on Telegram & forums
Data compromised
Employee names, addresses, PAN, Aadhaar, SBI passbooks, bank account numbers, IFSC, contact numbers, photo IDs, HR/payroll fields
Technical writeup
In July 2023, a Telegram channel (@sbi_data) posted an "SBI Employee Data Dump" with personal records for more than 12,000 State Bank of India employees; India Today and Business Today reported names, addresses, PAN numbers, SBI passbooks, account numbers, and photo IDs circulating on Telegram and other channels. The same window, ThreatSec Group marketed an SBI breach on DarkForums (July 7, 2023) with sample hr_employee SQL inserts showing Aadhaar numbers, bank account/IFSC details, PF/ESI numbers, salary fields, and employee images. SBI told BankInfoSecurity it was investigating an apparent leak; the bank did not publicly confirm the ~12,000 employee count. The DarkForums thread was edited in March 2026 but describes the 2023 incident, not a new 2026 breach.
Root cause
Unauthorized access; employee HR data exfiltrated and redistributed on Telegram and criminal forums