Tag: cyber attack

The next banking crisis

bankcrisisMany senior banking executives today still view IT as a superfluous cost. As such, a number of banks still use technology that date back decades, with minor upgrades and maintenance over the years. The IT systems that hold up our every financial move are a disaster waiting to happen.

A KPMG report warned last year that the next systemic shock to UK banking could come from an as yet unforeseen event, such as a massive payment outage or a cyber attack. Since the IT systems in most banks are complex and some essential parts of these systems are very old, a system outage is almost inevitable. The IT systems that hold up our every financial move are a disaster waiting to happen.

A Few Days To Disaster

In the summer of 2012, a routine software update in India caused an IT meltdown at the Royal Bank of Scotland. As a result, 17 million customers were locked out of their accounts for days. This was followed by a hardware failure in March 2013 that prevented millions of customers from accessing online services and ATMs for hours. While the bank is still under investigation by the Financial Conduct Authority over these incidents, it suffered a third embarrassing system outage on the busiest online shopping day before Christmas last year, followed by yet another IT failure a few days later

Catastrophic IT failures such as these can lead to financial chaos, create financial hardship for both businesses and families and, if not quickly addressed, may even lead to social breakdowns. If employers are unable to pay employees and people are unable to pay their rents, buy their groceries and medicine or pay for their transport, utilities and credit card bills, social unrest may ensue.

Due to the enormous number of transactions that take place every day in the financial sector, a major bank only has a matter of days to recover after suffering a catastrophic IT failure. If it fails, the backlog of financial transactions would simply become unmanageable, and the bank would be overwhelmed. This is of course an Armageddon scenario, but it is highly probable given that some of the core IT systems used by all UK banks were developed in the 1960s and 70s. We should be prepared for more problems like this to strike in the coming years. – economywatch.com

Massive cyber attack over past few days on PRAAG websites

praagorg_logoOver the past few days, starting on Tuesday morning, a massive cyber attack involving potentially tens of thousands of computers in a so-called Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) Attack was executed against websites and servers of PRAAG. The object of the attack was to bankrupt PRAAG and its service provider through the consumption of bandwidth and damage to network infrastructure.

At times the DDOS attack brought down the PRAAG servers but currently both the Afrikaans site at praag.co.za and the English one at praag.org are online.

Dr. Dan Roodt, Director of the Pro-Afrikaans Action Group (PRAAG) a community news service and cultural organisation, said in a statement: “We are absolutely astonished at the level of cyber activity currently directed against us, by extremist anti-Afrikaans groups in South Africa. There are also several Facebook pages run by people under assumed identities who wish to shut us down, ostensibly because we support anti-crime protests and multilingualism in South Africa.”

The cyber attack caused considerable damage not only to PRAAG, but also to its service providers and their networks, creating criminal liability under SA legislation. In addition, there are grounds for a civil suit if the perpetrators could be located.

“We are going to lay charges with the SAPS under the Electronic Communications and Transactions (ECT) Act 25 of 2002 for the DDOS attack against us, but also against those anonymous individuals slandering us on Facebook, social media, and in relation to potential advertisers on our site, said Roodt.

“We are not going to take these attacks lying down,” Roodt continued. “Our readers and supporters are right behind us and hundreds have presented themselves as volunteers to counter these attempts at muzzling us. However, we will not be using the distasteful and underhanded techniques of our opponents but will be defending ourselves in an open, transparent and legal manner.”