South Korea’s National
Agricultural Cooperative Federation (NCAF) is returning to
normality after a cyber attack crippled its IT systems.
The bank’s network,
which was out of action for two days in mid-April, has now been
restored although there are claims that data is still missing from
some customers’ accounts.
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The attack at the bank,
known locally as Nonghyup or NH Bank, affected approximately 5m
credit card accounts, leaving customers unable to use their cards,
check their balances, make repayments or receive cash
advances.
The system meltdown is
thought to be a result of a malicious attack that was launched by a
contractor at the bank. Nonghyup had outsourced its IT systems to
IBM and the laptop of one of the contractors has become the focus
of investigations. The laptop was used – with security access to
the bank’s servers – to launch commands to delete files from the
servers. The bank was forced to shut down its entire network until
the problem was resolved.
Regulators and
prosecutors have already launched an investigation, interviewing
Nonghyup and IBM employees to find out who had access to the
servers at the time of the attack. It is possible that the attack
was accidental, or the work of a disgruntled employee. Another
possibility is that the system was hacked from an external source
with the hacker gaining access to the passwords that control the
servers.
For now regulators are
keeping an open mind about the cause of the attack. A spokesman for
the Financial Services Commission (FSC) told Cards
International that the main focus of the investigation is to
establish whether it was an internal incident, or whether it was an
attack by an outside hacker.
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By GlobalData“We are open to all
possibilities”, the FSC spokesman said.
However, one source
told CI that some data is still missing, meaning that
some customers are still unable to find out how much money is in
their account, and what card balances they need to pay. However,
the bank is said to be working hard at restoring the data and
getting its systems up and running after the crippling
attack.
