dChan - Q Origins Project Archive

Banks Around World Are Suffering Big Outages, Leaving Millions of Customers in Lurch At Worst Possible Time

Posted on October 1, 2021 by Nick Corbishley

Twenty banks (some suffering repeated outages), six countries (one in lockdown), five continents, tens of millions of unhappy customers.

There’s never a good time for your bank’s IT system to go down. But few can be worse than in the middle of a lockdown. It’s difficult to leave home, your local branch may not be open, and as a result you are more reliant than ever on digital banking services. In New Zealand, now in its seventh week of nationwide lockdown, one of the country’s largest lenders, Kiwibank, went down on Tuesday, leaving many of its customers in the lurch. It is one of a string of IT outages the bank has suffered over the past three weeks, after a DDoS attack on New Zealand’s third largest Internet provider caused IT crashes at a number of lenders, including Commonwealth Bank and Anz Bank.

In a DDoS attack hackers overwhelm a site by getting huge numbers of bots to connect to it all at once, rendering it inaccessible. Servers are not breached, data is not stolen but it can still cause plenty of disruption.

24 Million Unhappy Customers

New Zealand is not the only country to have suffered major outages within its banking system in recent weeks. Other countries include the UK, Japan, South Africa, Venezuela and Mexico, though there are no doubt more (if you know of any, It would be great if you could provide details in the comments section).

On September 12, operating failures at Mexico’s largest bank, BBVA Mexico, left 24 million account holders unable to use the bank’s 13,000 ATMs, its mobile app or in-store payments for almost 20 hours. It being a Sunday, customers could not even avail of the lender’s in-branch cash services. The bank blamed the outage on a system update failure and has offered to compensate customers with cash bonuses on purchases when using their credit or debit cards. The bank was also at pains to assure them that their financial data was not compromised.

“It had nothing to do with the outside world,” said Jorge Terrazas, the bank’s director of communicate and corporate identity. “The bank and its customers’ information is secure. What we did was undo the changes to the system and return everything to as it was.”

Less than a week after BBVA’s outage, Santander Mexico, another Spanish-owned Mexican bank, suffered an outage that left customers across the country unable to use their debit cards at the ATM or in stores. Again, it was blamed on internal problems.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021/10/more-and-more-banks-around-world-are-suffering-outages-leaving-millions-of-customers-in-lurch-at-worst-possible-time.html

>>14707035

Major banks, airlines hit in new global online outage

AFP 6/17/2021

Major banks and airlines were among businesses hit by a fresh global online outage Thursday, with the problem traced to US-based tech provider Akamai.

An hour-long blackout hit a number of US airlines and several Australian financial firms as well as other companies dotted around the world, with angry customers unable to access websites and mobile apps.

"We are aware of the issue and actively working to restore services as soon as possible," an Akamai spokesperson told AFP.

American, Delta, United and Southwest airlines were among those affected, while the issue appeared to be more prolonged in Australia – where problems struck mid-afternoon as much of the world slept.

Australia's largest financial firm Commonwealth Bank told AFP that it and many of the country's major lenders had been hit.

The outages, which began around 2:10pm Sydney time (0510 GMT), also hit Australia's postal service and Virgin Australia.

The airline said in a statement that it "was one of many organisations to experience an outage with the Akamai content delivery system".

A spokesperson for ANZ bank told AFP the incident was "related to an external provider" but that "connectivity was restored quickly and the most impacted services are back online".

Banks in New Zealand and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange also reported problems with their web platforms.

It is the latest incident to draw attention to the stability of economically vital online platforms and the key role that a handful of mostly unknown companies play in keeping the web running.

Video: Australian banks, airlines suffer outages in latest internet glitch (France 24)

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Last week US media and government websites, including the White House, New York Times, Reddit and Amazon were temporarily hit after a glitch with cloud computing services provider Fastly.

Fastly offers a service to websites around the world to speed up loading times for websites.

Akamai offers a range of similar IT products designed to boost online performance and security.

The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company refused to comment on what product the problem came from, but one of the affected firms reported it used Akamai for "IT network authentication".

Among the services Akamai provides are platforms that prevent DDoS attacks – an often crude cyberattack that knocks websites out by peppering them with requests for data.

"Our priority is restoring service as quickly as possible. We will share additional information as it becomes available," an Akamai spokesperson said.

A series of high-profile hack-for-ransom attacks have also left corporations around the world jittery over cybersecurity risks, although there was no indication the latest problems were caused by malicious actors.

Colonial Pipeline was briefly shuttered after an attack in May, and JBS, the world's largest meat producer, was forced to stop operations in the United States and Australia.

Both firms reportedly paid ransoms to get operations back up and running.

The issue of cybersecurity was at the top of the agenda when US President Joe Biden and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin met in Geneva on Wednesday.

Washington believes hackers who have extorted hundreds of millions of dollars from Western governments, companies, and organisations operate from Russian soil.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/major-banks-airlines-hit-in-new-global-online-outage/ar-AAL8l8l

>>14707046

Sorry, just realized that is old

>>14707035

❗Banks Around World Are Suffering Big Outages! Special Report with Jean-Claude@BeyondMystic

>>14707082

Soon everyone will be talking about the #PandoraPapers.

The new investigation — our most expansive exposé of financial secrecy yet — drops Sunday at 12:30 p.m. EDT, 4:30 p.m. GMT.

Get ready for reporting from 600+ journalists from 150 media outlets in 117 countries.

https://twitter.com/ICIJorg/status/1444354034383605769

>>14707109

Same here

>>14707035

Global Payment System Settlement Freeze a High Likelihood

Call it now.

The world's payment settlement system is going to be attacked and fail severely.

Crisis, reactions, and then we get no choice in their solutions. Almost as if the World Economic Forum had not been telegraphing this for years ahead of time.

Have a brief look at what we mean below.

If you've been monitoring trends in the global business and financial world, you have seen this coming crisis year in advance.

And if you've bothered to study how old and analog our current global system of payment settlements is, this week's concern should be on the top of your mind.

The sourced clip above is courtesy of Bloomberg, and it's entitled The Next Big Risk: The Global Payment System Is Vulnerable to Attack.

We start this week listening to bond trading billionaire Scott Minerd, the Chief Investment Officer of Guggenheim Funds. A family fortune that was founded on refining the California Gold Rush.

We've highlighted he and his firm's silver bullion bullishness on this SD Bullion channel in years past.

Before we end this week's bullion market update, we're going to remind you just how financially connected this man is. What he has said on record is the transitional endgame phase for the global payments system. As well, we'll listen again to his take on silver's eventual parabolic rise potential to come. Mr. Minerd also is stating that the 10 yr US Treasury will probably go negative before this 40 yr bond bull market ends.

Before we begin this update in earnest, a few thought-provoking questions related to this topic of payment settlement system freezing up.

How will our vulnerable Global Payment System react to large-scale coordinated hacks, attacks, and or significant Natural disasters like solar flares that can potentially blow out nearly everything digital and electronic it possibly blows through here on Earth?