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Access Bank has remained down for over three days fueling speculations that the bank has been hacked. In the last three days, all the electronic channels of the bank have experienced service blackout for customers whether on the USSD, mobile app and internet banking channels.
RELATED: Access Bank denies data breach, says customers information not violated
“You may experience some challenges while carrying out transactions on our channels. Please bear with us as we work swiftly to restore services across all platforms,” the bank told its customers Friday while it battled all the weekend to resolve the issue.
However, service remained down with customers unable to conduct transactions electronically leading to social media angst as customers’ frustrations mount.
“We are diligently working to establish stability across all our service touchpoints. We sincerely appreciate your understanding as we strive to achieve this. Thank you for your continued patience and support,” Access Bank tried to calm its restive customers via social media posts.
“When online and mobile banking services go down for an extended period, like days, it is a red signal that something terrible has happened to overwhelm the technical and security measures of that bank,” one expert told IT Edge News in Lagos at the weekend stating that the bank may have been hacked, a persistent threat for the global finance industry.
Earlier in November, China’s biggest lender, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) was hacked and reportedly paid a ransom, Reuters quoted a Lockbit ransomware gang representative, which the news agency said it could not independently verify.
“The bank is not talking and is keeping everyone to their wildest guess,” said another cybersecurity expert.
Adding: “At this stage, some of reasons you could expertly pinpoint for the long breakdown include: technical glitches or software issues meaning that Access Bank is battling with bugs, software updates gone wrong, or unexpected technical issues within the system all of which have disrupted services.
“On the other hand, it could have been server outages or hardware failures meaning that the bank is battling with physical server failures or issues with the data centres hosting these services and forcing the bank to suffer the prolonged outages.
“But my suspicion is that Access Bank is experiencing sophisticated cyberattacks or security breaches that have overwhelmed all deterrents on ground and thus, forced the bank to shut down its systems temporarily for investigation, damage assessment, and strengthening security measures as it works to restore stability in its services which expectedly, would take days.”
In 2020, Access Bank denied being hacked after a hacker claimed to have gained access to its server. The bank asked the public to discountenance a purported data leak that has exposed customers information including their Bank Verification Numbers (BVNs).
Headquartered in Nigeria, the Access Bank Group is a financial services conglomerate with subsidiaries in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, The Gambia, Guinea, Cameroon, Sierra Leone, Mozambique, Botswana, South Africa, Zambia, France and the United Kingdom. The group also maintains representative offices in China, India, Lebanon and United Arab Emirates.
