SA banks targeted by “cyber attack” – here’s how it affects us

Looks like the online criminals have been busy on Friday. Just hours after the City of Johannesburg confirmed they were stung by a cyber attack, the same thing seems to have happened to the major banks of South Africa. Customers are experiencing delays and issues with transactions – and it just so happens to be payday for many of us.

Banks targeted by “cyber attack”

SABRIC, the South African Banking Risk Information Centre, have confirmed that the industry has been hit by a wave of ransom driven Distributed Denial of Service attacks, targeting various public facing services across multiple banks. The malicious attempts began on Wednesday, and have been linked to the disruptions faced by Standard Bank customers yesterday.

These attacks started with a ransom note which was delivered via email to both unattended as well as staff email addresses, all of which were publicly available. Threat intelligence which has surfaced revealed that this is a “multi-jurisdictional attack” meaning wthat several countries being targeted. This is not being treated as a targeted attack on just South African companies.

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But how does this impact South Africans and their banking practices? SABRIC explained the following:

• Clients may have problems accessing their apps or online banking
• Transactions relying on an “online connection” will face “minor disruptions”
• Thankfully, the attack is not connected to data breaching software. No-one’s personal details are at risk, here.

The group also released a statement on the matter earlier in the day. Susan Potgieter is SABRIC’s acting CEO. She says that cybersecurity experts are already on the case and disruptions will likely “be kept to a minimum”.

“We must emphasise that DDoS attacks like this one do not involve hacking or a data breach and therefore no customer data is at risk. It does however, involve increased traffic on networks necessary to access public facing services. This may cause minor disruptions.

“Robust defensive strategies have been invoked across the industry and we are confident that customer impact will be kept to a minimum. Despite our Banks preparedness and resilience, we will continue to monitor this situation very closely and respond as required,”

SABRIC acting CEO Susan Potgieter.

Cyber attack also hits Johannesburg

The City of Joburg has it much worse, on the face of things. Locals are unable to use their websites to pay for their e-bills or log queries with the support team. The hackers behind that cyber attack have asked for a R437 000 ransom – payable in Bitcoin – or else they will release sensitive information on Johannesburg’s residents.

The municipality has been given a deadline of 17:00 on Monday to meet their demands. Meanwhile, SABRIC are doing what they can to get all disrupted systems back online.