CBA’s NetBank Services Disrupted Due to DOS Attack

The Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) confirmed on June 30, 2009 that its online banking service, NetBank, was had been hit by a malevolent attack. It (the attack) reached its third day on June 30, 2009.

However, there were no instances of customer accounts being hijacked, the bank stated. Customers could not avail the NetBank services which had become erratic during the attack period because of what presently seems to be an enormous DOS (Denial-of-Service) attack in which hackers send huge number of requests to a website thus overloading it to the point of collapse.

Understandably, 80% of the e-mails attempting to reach the primary server were from unfamiliar sources, raising doubts about the IT security at Commonwealth.

Nichole Ismay, Spokesperson of CBA, said in an e-mail that the bank had been receiving an enormous amount of traffic and some of it seemed to be malevolent, as reported by TheSheet on July 1, 2009. According to Ismay, the type and source of the traffic awaited identification.

Previously on June 30, 2009, numerous customers of Commonwealth Bank could not log-in their accounts since dubious hike in inbound traffic, which presumably hackers had been sending, continuously disrupted the service even on the last day of the financial year.

Moreover, CBA confirmed that traffic flowing towards its NetBank had risen nearly 66%.

It suggested accountholders to keep attempting to log-in to the bank's online site, or to get in touch with CBA. On four instances over just one day, CBA's NetBank service had to be shutdown as the bank struggled with a suspected attack from malicious hackers.

Following Commonwealth's launch of a novel Internet banking facility, there have been a flood of fraudulent e-mails, Internet scams and phishing attempts targeting the bank over recent months, as possibly offshore hackers attempted to examine the online security strength of the banking institution.

Further, many customers complained online about the incessant troubles in opening the Net banking site, and discrepancies between the balances in their accounts and the transactions they made. Although some did succeed in accessing NetBank, the site displayed no transaction, customers said.

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» SPAMfighter News - 7/9/2009