The domain address, belonging to Nigeria’s leading financial institution, Guaranty Trust Bank (GTBank), has been compromised by unknown hackers. Late on Wednesday, August 14, 2024, customers of the bank began reporting their inability to access the site on social media. Many stated that despite multiple attempts to log on to www.gtbank.com, the site returned error messages. This began at 10:30 PM local Nigerian time.
Local media reports indicate the incident occurred just a day after the bank had its domain name renewed. An unauthorized layer was inserted to potentially steal customer data through phishing. Cybersecurity experts believe the attack likely targeted the bank’s login credentials rather than the website domain itself.
In recent years, Nigerian banks have been spending more money to boost their IT infrastructure and security. Based on a report, GTBank was ranked second in spending to improve their security systems and ease customer transactions. First on the list was Access bank Nigeria.
However, a renowned Nigerian serial entrepreneur with years of experience technology and business management took to X to claim the hack was a result of archaic infrastructure.
The website is still not accessible at the time of writing. The bank’s mobile applications for both Android and iOS continued to function normally, indicating that the attack was primarily focused on the website. The bank has yet to publicly comment on the incident.
As of 2023, GTBank had a total of 25,000 members in Kenya. There has been no complaints in Kenya and its local domain is accesible. It remains quite a small player in the local market in comparison to leading tier 1 bank, Equity Bank, that has more than 16.9 million customers.
