Kiwibank’s internet banking and mobile app are suffering outages today with customers unable to access their accounts or move funds.
It is 20 days since a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack is thought to have caused intermittent service issues for banks Kiwibank and ANZ, and the websites of NZ Post, NZ Police, MetService, and others.
But Kiwibank alone continues to be affected by service disruption that leaves many of its customers unable to access their online banking accounts.
In previous outages, services such as eftpos, ATMs, scheduled payments, and wage payments were unaffected.
“Kia ora koutou. We’re aware customers are currently unable to access our app and internet banking. We have a team working on this. We apologise for the disruption and really appreciate your patience while we work to get this sorted. Arohanui,” Kiwibank posted on its Twitter and Facebook pages on Tuesday morning.
The message is similar to those posted on the same platforms over the last few weeks.
“We are experiencing intermittent access issues with internet banking, our app, and phone banking today. We know what the issue is, and we have teams working urgently to restore services for customers,” a Kiwibank spokesperson told BusinessDesk.
“There are no current issues with payments, ATMs or cards. We know this is impacting our customers for which we sincerely apologise. We also acknowledge the frustration of not being able to provide further information at this stage.”
In the dark
Kiwibank has not publicly explained the reason for the initial and ongoing outages. The DDoS attack on several organisations was revealed by CertNZ, but no other source has confirmed it.
It is unclear if Tuesday's disruption is due to a cyber-attack.
Experts say Kiwibank may have been advised by its security partners and by organisations such as CertNZ and the Government Communications Security Bureau not to say if it has been attacked.
Lack of information is usual after a cyber-attack as information may change the behaviour of the attackers, the National Cyber Security Centre told BusinessDesk earlier this month.
It is more likely an explanation will be given publicly after the issues have been resolved.
Kiwibank’s phone support and social media teams continue to front up to angry customers as the bank’s executives stay quiet.
“Definitely need to change banks!!! This is happening way too often! Not good enough kiwibank!,” a customer posted in response to Kiwibank’s post today on its Facebook page.
“Glad I found this post, I thought it was just happening to me. Kiwibank can you please update us on what is causing this and whether it's something you expect to have ongoing issues with or not?,” posted another.
