Has Natwest Been Hacked?

    Has Natwest Been Hacked?

    NatWest customers have been forced to seek alternative sources of funding, sometimes just to get home from work. Some have even resorted to payday loans after NatWest's banking system crashed on Thursday. However, the bank has yet to disclose the cause of the crash, prompting suspicions and speculation that NatWest may have suffered a hacking breach.

    What initially appeared to be a simple banking system glitch brought the entire network to a standstill. Customers found themselves thrown back 50 years, unable to access cash at a moment’s notice.

    High-interest lenders were inundated with applications for loans, with the average amount requested being just £100. This suggests that many of the 12.1 million customers affected were left completely without funds.

    Unhappy Customers

    One customer, who applied for a loan through Quick Loans, recounted their experience:

    "I was at work until about 5 p.m. when a colleague asked to borrow some money to get home. When I asked why, he said, ‘I went to the cash point, and the network is down, so I can’t withdraw money.’ At first, I laughed at the situation, but then someone asked which bank he was with, and he said NatWest. That’s when I started to panic, as that’s my bank too.

    "I searched online to see what was happening and discovered the whole system was down. I needed money for shopping on my way home, so I applied for a loan online and had the funds paid into my Barclays account. It wasn’t ideal, but at least I managed to access some money."

    NatWest has said it will compensate customers who have lost money due to the glitch, but the extent of this compensation remains unclear. Will they cover the fees for loans that customers had to take out as a result of the outage? What about fees for failed direct debits because people couldn’t pay their bills on time?

    The situation has sparked significant speculation, with rumours circulating that NatWest may have suffered a sophisticated hacking attempt, and that hackers may have infiltrated the system. While there is no concrete evidence of this, it highlights the level of concern and uncertainty surrounding the issue.

    NatWest has announced that the system will not be fully restored until Monday, 25th June, at the earliest. This lengthy delay points to a major failure and raises the possibility of a security breach.

    Update: 25/06/2012

    We spoke to a friend of a friend who works in IT security for another major UK bank. According to them, there are reports of a security briefing circulating from HM Treasury, detailing patterns that all banks should monitor for. However, no further information has been disclosed, even to those within the industry.

    When asked if they were certain this was a hacking attempt, they replied:

    “These banks do not implement major upgrades in one go. Upgrades are done in batches, and results are monitored. If issues arise, they simply roll back to the previous software version. The fact that this hasn’t happened strongly suggests hacking. If it were just a software issue, they’d have rolled back the changes.”

    Update 2: 26/06/2012, 01:30

    A new source has suggested that the breach may not have been external after all. Instead, it is believed that the security alert stems from internal breaches at NatWest's Indian IT centre. Early indications suggest rogue employees—two or more—may have infiltrated the department over a period of time.

    The delay in restarting systems was reportedly due to checks for malware still embedded in the network. Furthermore, the updated software could not be rolled back because it had been mysteriously deleted.

    If true, this raises serious questions about internal security protocols. Could it really be that simple?

    Whatever the case, the secrecy surrounding the incident is alarming. When will NatWest come clean?


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