Glitch snarls CBA's online bank | Chris Zappone
June 29, 2009 - 2:22PM

Commonwealth Bank's web banking service NetBank failed today, in what could be a hacker attack, leaving thousands of customers unable to access their accounts via the internet.

A recorded message on the bank's phone access line acknowledged the problem with NetBank, saying it was ''working to resolve this as a matter of emergency.'' The bank blamed "intermittent network issues" and gave no set time for the entire system to be restored.

"Service is currently beginning to resume and some customers are being serviced," a spokesman for the bank said, although NetBank did not appear to be functioning by mid-afternoon.

The bank apologized to customers for the inconvenience.

Customers who tried to access their accounts online received a message saying, ''NetBank is temporarily unavailable,'' and urging them to try to phone their customer account line.  Customers unable to access their accounts should ring 132 221, the bank said.

Hacker attack?

Commonwealth Bank has attracted a flurry of phishing attempts, fraudulent emails and online scams in recent months, since launching an upgraded online banking portal.

Phishing is the use of fraudulent emails to scam customers out of personal details like bank account passwords.  (Editor's Note:  Again, if consumers were not trained to "type" their log-in details, such as a username and password, and instead, swiped their bank issued debit card and entered their bank issued PIN code, the threat of phishing would be eliminated.  It is how you access the bank's ATM so why wouldn't and shouldn't it be the way you access your online banking account?  Swipe, don't Type).

Although the network issues experienced today are thought to be unrelated, Commonwealth has taken the service down temporarily to run tests on the system to check its integrity, said chief information officer Michael Harte.  "We haven't completely ruled out an attempt to do a denial of service attack,'' he said.

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Commonwealth Bank, phishing, DoSS, Denial of Service, online banking, Hacker