How to protect your KYC (Know Your Customer) data and applications against unauthorized access and tampering.

It’s time for a reality check regarding know-your-customer, biometric, and user data. 3 in 5 businesses have seen an increase in identity fraud attempts in the last year. Meanwhile, fraud attempts have surged by 80% and identity fraud attempts by 74% over the last three years. Of those fraud attempts, deepfakes made up 6.5%, up a massive 2,000% over the same period. The fraud success rate is holding steady, but there’s no let-up for businesses. 

Generative AI and image-creation tools enable criminals to produce forged documents and deepfakes more quickly and effectively than ever before. And serious organized crime groups are crowding out lone-wolf opportunist criminals, increasing the speed and scale of attacks.

How Much is Stolen KYC Data Worth to Criminals?

Criminals steal user data, including KYC and biometric data, to use it or sell it to others. The price for stolen data on dark web forums reflects supply and demand, as well as data quality and the seller’s reputation.

A US social security number may sell for as little as $1. Whereas a credit card number with a 3-digit security code typically fetches $10-60, depending on availability and credit limits. An online banking login sells for $200-1,000, depending on the account balance.

Meanwhile, non-financial data sells for as much, if not more than, financial data. For example, access to Facebook accounts ($45-50), Gmail accounts ($60), passport scans ($100), driver’s license scans ($70-165), and complete medical records ($500+).

How Do Criminals Use Stolen KYC Data?

Stolen personal and financial data can be used to gain unauthorized access to bank and credit card accounts. Criminals then withdraw cash, max out credit cards, or impersonate genuine customers to fraudulently obtain loans or open accounts.

Criminals also commit synthetic identity fraud by blending real and fictitious information to create a synthetic identity to apply for credit, mobile phone contracts, etc. These fake IDs can also be added to accounts as a secondary user to build a credit profile.

Non-financial data can be used for account takeovers (ATO), sophisticated insurance fraud, blackmail, or ransom. One of the most infamous examples of this was when Finland’s largest psychotherapy company, Vastaamo, was breached, and the hacker attempted to blackmail 33,000 patients, whose confidential therapy notes he stole.

Corporate user data, such as high-privilege domain admin or cloud admin credentials, can sell for tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars. This is precisely because criminals can use them to commit potentially lucrative crimes.

The same holds for zero-day exploits, which exploit unknown or unaddressed vulnerabilities in computer hardware, software, or firmware. One of the most famous zero-day exploits was Stuxnet in 2010. This targeted Iran’s nuclear facilities by exploiting four zero-day vulnerabilities. 

How Do KYC Data Breaches Affect Individuals?

When a customer’s identity documents, biometric data, or personal records are exposed, the KYC provider is accountable — to regulators, to the businesses it serves, and to the end users whose data it was entrusted to protect. 

The downstream impact on verified users from fraudulent account takeovers, phishing attacks, and damaged credit histories quickly becomes a liability for the platform that failed to protect them. Enterprise clients sourcing KYC services expect their provider to absorb that risk, not pass it on. Lost contracts, regulatory penalties under the GDPR, and reputational damage to the provider’s brand can result from a single serious incident. 

What is the Business Impact of KYC Data Breaches?

The full cost of a data breach to a business could be massive. These include the direct costs of lost revenue, incident response, fines, and breach notification. No corporate or public sector organization is immune. 94% of banking organizations have been affected by identity fraud. And 34% of fraud cases involve manipulating biometric data to deceive verification systems. This includes physical deceptions, such as fake fingerprints, silicone masks, or 3D models that outsmart biometric sensors. 

Biometrics is raising the bar against fraudsters by anchoring identity to something uniquely human. Fingerprints, facial recognition, or voice patterns are harder to replicate compared to a password or card that can be guessed, stolen, or shared.

However, the growth of AI is making deepfake fraud easier and more common. AI-generated faces, voices, and videos increasingly look real and are being deployed to pass ‘liveness detection’ tests in digital KYC and onboarding. 

1 in 5 transactions and customer onboarding attempts are fraudulent. That’s according to digital identity provider Signicat, which also found that more than one-fifth (22%) of annual business revenue was impacted by identity fraud and the cost of trying to prevent it. So, the need to keep KYC data secure has become a business imperative with real bottom-line impact.

How Do Businesses Protect Against KYC Data Breaches?

The first step in keeping your customers’ data and business safe is understanding the threats out there. Specifically on the SDK side: script injection, reverse engineering, monkey patching, code tampering, digital skimming, and supply chain attacks in the web browser journey. Forewarned is forearmed when it comes to guiding your threat response.

Start by implementing controls to prevent unauthorized access to sensitive data. For KYC and biometric SaaS providers, this means securing both the server-side infrastructure and the client-side JavaScript SDK that runs in customers’ browsers. Code obfuscation, tamper detection, and runtime protection are essential layers — particularly to defend against script injection, monkey patching, reverse engineering, and virtual camera bypass attacks that specifically target identity verification flows.

Also, conduct regular security assessments, monitoring, and third-party due diligence (for the web browser flow), plus deploy secure code and a comprehensive patching regime. Prevention is better, cheaper, and less painful than a cure when it comes to protecting customer KYC data online.

How Does Jscrambler Help Prevent KYC Data Breaches?

Jscrambler provides a comprehensive client-side protection solution tailored for KYC and biometrics SaaS platforms. Our advanced polymorphic code obfuscation ensures robust security with minimal performance impact, offering a high degree of customization to meet specific needs.

Ensure SDK Protection

The Jscrambler tamper-resistant code thwarts reverse-engineering attempts by obfuscating the code to prevent runtime analysis or modification. Available in real-time, delivering protection at the speed of business.

Secure Higher Conversion

Take advantage of performance-focused customization that balances obfuscation strength with application efficiency. Faster load times and smaller file sizes enhance the onboarding experience.

Get Better Risk Management

Evaluate threats effectively with risk scores. Assigned to tag behaviors for all web pages and user interactions throughout the code lifecycle, so nothing slips through the gaps.

Bolster Customer Trust

Establishing robust security measures is paramount to building trust among users who may be cautious during KYC verification and want to be sure their data sharing is safe.

The Jscrambler Client-Side Security platform protects proprietary application logic, governs third-party and post-deployment supply chain behavior, enforces least-privilege access to sensitive data, controls what feeds external AI systems, and prevents unauthorized transmission during live interactions. 

Jscrambler in Action: Securing Biometric Authentication for a Leading Identity Verification Provider

A London-based identity verification provider, one of Europe's leading biometric vendors, needed to extend certified mobile SDK protection to the web, where DOM tampering and virtual camera bypass attacks threatened to undermine its liveness verification mechanisms. With eIDAS 2.0 compliance also on the line, the company selected Build38’s mobile SDK security tool and Jscrambler's Code Integrity technology to shield its JavaScript web SDK from runtime manipulation and reverse engineering.

After a proof-of-concept simulating real-world attack scenarios, the results spoke for themselves: robust attack prevention with zero impact on user experience, and a unified security posture across both mobile and web channels.  "We jumped on a call with the Jscrambler team and got very good guidance about what we needed to do. It was easy to set up, easy to fine-tune when it needed fine-tuning, and that was it. Then we let it run," the Development Lead shared.

The partnership delivered measurable impact across security, performance, and compliance:

1. Unified client-side protection: a single security solution covering both mobile and web channels

2. Reliable at-scale performance: effective against targeted attacks with no impact on user experience

3. SDK security risk mitigation: runtime protection against injection, tampering, and reverse engineering, in compliance with eIDAS 2.0 standards

By partnering with Jscrambler, the company extended its leadership in biometric authentication, ensuring its web channel is as trusted and fraud-resistant as its mobile one. Discover how Jscrambler and Build38 secured biometric authentication end-to-end in the case study.

Jscrambler Client-Side Security Platform

Fraud tactics are evolving fast, and remote identity verification is squarely in the crosshairs. In the upcoming webinar, Jscrambler partners with Cryptomathic to break down how attackers are using video injection, deepfakes, virtual cameras, and session manipulation to bypass IDV controls, and what it takes to stop them. You'll walk away with practical strategies for securing the full IDV flow across browser and mobile environments, protecting trusted signals, and aligning with standards like OWASP, NIST, and ETS, all without adding friction for legitimate users. Designed for fraud, identity, and security leaders, this session is one you won't want to miss. Register here.