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Friday, January 29, 2016

HSBC Online Banking Hit By Cyber Attack

Customers were told to visit their local branch for all urgent transactions and the bank said all major branches would remain open on Saturday.
The bank revealed on Friday morning it had been hit by "denial of service" attacks and said it had "successfully defended against the attack".
HSBC said customer transactions were not affected and that normal service was being resumed, but hours later it said internet and mobile services had still only partially recovered.
HSBC app message
The bank tweeted: "We continue to defend ourselves against today's attack.
"For urgent transactions please visit your local branch.
"All our major branches will be open on Saturday."
HSBC said it had fallen victim to "denial of service" attacks. This sort of attack seeks to overload and bring down an online platform through sheer volume of traffic.
By late on Friday afternoon the problems had still not been fully resolved.
John Hackett, UK chief operating officer, said: "HSBC's internet and mobile services have partially recovered, and we continue to work to restore a full service.
"We are continuing to experience attempted denial of service attacks and we are closely monitoring the situation with the authorities."
A spokesman later added: "HSBC internet and mobile banking are now fully recovered. Thanks for your patience and again we apologise for the disruption."
It is the second major outage to face HSBC's services this month following two days of faults - blamed on a "complex technical issue" - which sparked calls for a full explanation from the chair of the Commons Treasury Select Committee, Andrew Tyrie.
Mr Tyrie reaffirmed his concerns after the latest episode.
He said: "Episodes like today's bring a great deal of uncertainty, and sometimes disruption and distress to customers.
"Bank IT systems just don't seem to be up to the job. This leaves bank customers with a substandard service. Every bit as concerning, it could be leaving the banking system, and with it the economy, exposed to the risk of systemic failures.
"Incidents like these are unacceptably frequent, and sometimes serious. Until this is sorted out, the public will remain more exposed than necessary to the risks of IT banking failures, including delays in paying bills, an inability to obtain their own money, and unauthorised access to their accounts."
This latest outage will be particularly inconvenient for those who are due to be paid, while Sunday is the deadline for self-assessment tax returns.
HSBC pledged to waive any fees racked up by customers as a direct result of the latest incident.
The bank, which has 17 million personal and business banking customers across the UK, has not said how many people have been affected.
The latest episode follow the high-profile cyber attack last year involving telecoms firm TalkTalk, which resulted in 157,000 customers' personal details being accessed.
Earlier this week, Information Commissioner Christopher Graham told MPs that hacking a company's website had become so simple that even a three-year-old could do it.

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