Qatar National Bank Declares Systems ‘Fully Secure’ Sequel To Cyber-attack

Following the recent security breach suffered by the Qatar National Bank has assured that its systems are “fully secure”.

Sequel to a recent cyber-attack that led to a large chunk of files purportedly stolen from the financial institution’s systems being dumped online, Qatar National Bank has assured that its systems are “fully secure”.

The bank asserted in a statement published to its website on Sunday, that the said cyber-attack incident will have zilch financial impact on its customers.

The leaked data said to total about 1.5 Gigabyte, comprises about 15,000 files was dumped at Cryptome and other sources, and initially disseminated via Twitter employing several twitter accounts that tweeted a global-files.net link to news organizations, journalists amongst others. The data stored in folders, includes banking information such as: QNB user profiles, photographs, phone numbers, payment card details, email and physical addresses, banking information, payment card details, email addresses and passwords of clients. Some of the names are said to be linked to government organizations, including intelligence agencies, in Qatar and other countries. One of the folders contained information on media company ‘Al Jazeera’.

Qatar National Bank claims some of the leaked information was pulled from “non-QNB sources”. According to the bank, “while some of the data recently released in the public domain may be accurate, much of it was constructed and contains a mixture of information from the attack as well as other non-QNB sources, such as personal data from social media channels,” it’s statement read.  The statement goes further to say, “we believe the nature of this incident is fundamentally an attempted attack on QNB Group’s reputation and not specifically targeted at our customers,”.

“All our customers’ accounts are secure, and as always, we encourage customers to be vigilant, taking the usual precautions of frequently changing their usernames and passwords through QNB Group internet banking.”

Qatar National Bank (QNB) was established in 1964 as the country’s first Qatari-owned commercial bank. The bank reported profits of about $787 million for the first quarter of year 2016.

This reported breach at Qatar National Bank (QNB) comes within weeks that Bangladesh’s central bank announced that cybercriminals stole over $100 million from one of its accounts at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York during a cyber-heist. Though the bank was able to recover some of the money, but $81 million that were transferred to the Philippines remain missing.

Experts at BAE Systems, a renowned British defense, security and aerospace firm revealed a while ago that the Bangladesh central bank cyber-attackers seem to have deployed custom-made malware which enabled them to channel fraudulent transfers without being spotted.

The aforementioned incidents underscore the global proliferation of cyber-attacks and the need for organizations to ramp up their cybersecurity measures. A cliché says there are two kinds of organizations – those cognizant they have been hacked and those that are yet to find out. Which category does your organization belong to?

Written by: Don Okereke

Author Bio: Don Okereke is a seasoned, technology and social media-savvy security consultant, ex-serviceman, voracious reader, writer, blogger and public speaker with nearly 20 years combined experience distilled from Nigeria and the United Kingdom. Don is passionate about cybersecurity, open-source intelligence, researching, gathering, disseminating information and rendering altruistic service to humanity. He is the publisher/editor-in-chief of www.donokereke.blogspot.com through which he disseminates cutting-edge security, safety, threat alerts, and passionately advocates against violent extremism and crime.

Follow Don on Twitter: @donokereke

[adrotate banner=”9″]

Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – Qatar National Bank , banking)