Guaranty Trust Bank Plc has confirmed there was an isolated incident of an attempt to compromise its website domain on Wednesday.
In a statement on Thursday, the bank stated that the incident was unsuccessful and that its website was not cloned. On Wednesday, many customers of the bank could not access its websites, and speculations that the website had been hacked started to brew.
However, there are indications that the bank may have forgotten to renew its website’s domain name, and according to reports, the bank had to make some changes to its domain name service.
Read also: The GTBank story: Push a door and it might open
“While there was an isolated incident of an attempt to compromise our website domain, we would like to assure all our Customers and Stakeholders that the Bank’s website has not been cloned and that we do not store customer information on our website, and as such, there has been no instance of compromise of customer data,” the bank said.
In 2016, a former Google employee temporarily took over the search giant’s domain name after it let its ownership slip. Sanmay Ved purchased Google.com for $12 on September 29. The transaction was reversed when Google sent Ved a cancellation order, which returned ownership to the company.
In 2003, Microsoft encountered a similar issue when it lost ownership of the Hotmail.co.uk website. The software giant got the domain name back on the same day.
According to GTB, its team of Information Security Experts are still working to restore domain settings. As of 12:32 pm on Thursday, checks revealed that the bank’s website was back online.
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