In a statement, NatWest said it had
experienced a sudden rush of visitors to
its website, causing it to crash. This was
due to a "deliberate" attack by hackers. A spokesman said:"Due to a surge in
internet traffic deliberately directed at
the NatWest website, customers
experienced difficulties accessing some
of our customer web sites today. "This deliberate surge of traffic is
commonly known as a distributed denial
of service (DDoS) attack. We have taken
the appropriate action to restore the
affected web sites. At no time was there
any risk to customers. We apologise for the inconvenience caused." Customers took to Twitter to complain at
around midday. One said: “Now the
entire NatWest website is down. Not
ideal timing to be having these issues a
week before my [house] completion
date...” Another wrote: “Is Natwest online
banking not working for anyone else? So
frustrating." Customers appeared unable to log-in via
the main homepages of the banks'
websites. However, NatWest told one
customer to log in via this link http://
goo.gl/ZPDdZ? . The customer said this
worked. RBS executives apologised profusely for
a systems meltdon on Monday night
which saw millions of customers of RBS,
NatWest and Ulster Bank unable to
withdraw cash or make payments. The bank said the disruption lasted from
between approximately 6.30pm and
9.30pm. During this time an estimated
750,000 people are likely to have tried
to use a cash machine. All systems were up and running again
on Tuesday morning, the company
stressed. Speaking on BBC Radio Four's Today
programme a spokeswoman said the
outage and inconvenience caused to
customers was "completely
unacceptable". She said the causes of
the problem, and the precise numbers of customers affected, were unknown. The
matter was being investigated, she said. For "even one customer not to be able to
access their money was unacceptable,"
she said. Based on the assumption that a quarter
of the bank's customers make payments
or access their accounts in some way
every hour, the number of those
affected was likely to be in the millions. The bank has promised to invest £450m
to improve its IT systems. Customers of the banks are fast
becoming used to tehcnological failures.
In June 2012, a failed software update
locked millions out of their accounts for
up to a month. In October 2012, the bank
had to suspend its GetCash mobile app over fraud fears.
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