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Deliberate DOS Attack Slows NAB Website

An attack by unknown parties has deliberately slowed down the website of the 'National Australia Bank', creating problems for online banking services, said NAB spokesperson Megan Lane. She said till now NAB has no knowledge of the source or motivation of the attack but the incident had been reported to the 'Australia High Tech Crime Center' (AHTCC) - a division of the Australian Federal Police.

NAB said this was not the first event of its kind but this DoS (Denial of Service) attack was a stronger attempt to block access to company's website.

It was on Wednesday, October 18, 2006 that the bank noticed the attack. Since then there was no real impact and the functioning of the website was OK until recently when there was a bit of residual impact. In some cases, the customers had to make several attempts to view the site. The attack has definitely slowed down the access and even shut down the website in between.

The 'chief information officer' of NAB, Michelle Tredenick said that he received complaints of slow or intermittent access to the company's online banking services. The reason, according to him, was a "deliberate attempt' by some outsiders who tried to manipulate the website.

The people made hits to jam NAB's connection to the Internet making site visit harder. NAB apologizes to its customers for the inconvenience caused. it has worked along with authorities to resolve the problem. The company's security systems managed to protect its internal systems and customer information was not at risk.

The attack was an aftermath of a series of spoof e-mails that fraudulently captured personal information from NAB customers. The e-mails tricked them into clicking on a link claiming to be from the bank's website. The hoax e-mail elicited details like passwords and might have viruses to enable miscreants to read the user's keystrokes facilitating access to their account numbers.

NAB alerts people to be wary of e-mails posing to be from the bank inviting to click on spurious link to the bank's website. The bank suggests its customers to delete any such e-mail they receive.

Related article: Deliberate DOS Assault Disrupts NDP Voting

» SPAMfighter News - 10/25/2006

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