HSBC in the UK has revealed via Twitter that its internet banking services were targeted by cybercriminals this morning (January 29th), which it has “successfully defended”.
It has reassured customers that it is “working hard” to bring its systems online, meaning that, for now, many people will not be able to managing their finances online.
A spokesman for the bank later confirmed that a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack was used in this incident.
"HSBC UK internet banking was attacked this morning. We successfully defended our systems."
A DDoS attack is when “multiple computers make repeated requests for data to one computer or device”.
This barrage of requests is something that a system is not used to processing, which usually results in it crashing.
HSBC added that no sensitive customer information has been compromised by the cyberattack.
This has not been a good month for the bank’s customers, who were, earlier in January, unable to log into their online accounts.
It took close to two days for HSBC to resolve the issue, which was attributed to a “complex technical issue within its systems”.
“I’m pleased to say that we have seen a steady return of service to internet banking in the past few hours for our personal and business customers,” John Hackett, HSBC's UK chief operating officer commented at the time.
“We will be monitoring the service very closely, ready to respond should any new issues arise. It is encouraging that more and more customers have been able to log on this afternoon.”
