The website domain name of Guaranty Trust Bank (GTBANK) have become inaccessible in what Nigerians believed to be a suspected attack on the commercial bank by hackers.
As at Wednesday evening and most of the afternoon, the GTBank website, gtbank.com, was no longer accessible. Transactions by many customers including yours truly were almost impossible until about midnight when a number of people moved their deposits to other banks.
The issue is said to have arisen just a day after the domain was renewed for another five years, extending its validity from August 13, 2024, through March 21, 2029, according to several online platforms that track domain information.
No hacker group has claimed responsibility for the alleged hacker on the website.
According to Peoples Gazette, the alleged attackers may have set up a fraudulent version of the website in an attempt to phish for customers’ sensitive information.
A cybersecurity expert familiar with Nigeria’s banking sector indicated that the compromise could have involved the bank’s login credentials, rather than the domain being hijacked for resale.
Despite the disruption to the website, the bank’s mobile applications on Android and iOS remained functional at the time of this report.
GTBank, one of Nigeria’s largest financial institutions, serves millions of customers across Nigeria and other African countries.
