Tokelo Khausela
THE Central Bank of Lesotho was cyber-attacked by a group of cyber fraudsters, INC Ransomware, in December 2023 who demanded a ransom from the bank. It refused to concede to their demands.
The attack paralysed Lesotho’s banking sector with daily banking transactions coming to a standstill.
The CBL’s First Deputy Governor, Lehlomela Mohapi, said the attackers hacked five servers of the bank. They failed to steal any money.
“The attackers had managed to encrypt five servers of the CBL and wanted ransom for it however the CBL did not succumb and managed to unencrypt all the servers.
“We removed the system of the Central Bank from the network as a precautionary measure after seeing that we were compromised.
“The delay of the payments that had occurred during the cause of events was not a result of an attacked system but rather of a precautionary measure,” Mr Mohapi said.
The CBL’s governor, Maluke Letete, said the attack had forced them to upgrade their security.
“We are going to fix the protective measures by building triple layer security walls so that penetrating will not be easy for hackers. The good thing is that no money was lost to those attackers during the encrypting of our five servers.
“Being attacked by cybers it is not a new thing in the country but we are back and we should be proud. Basotho should remain confident in us although it will take time to win back their trust,” Dr Letete said.
He said a report will be issued analysing the impact of the attack on the economy.
Dr Letete commended financial institutions for their collaboration to manage the situation.
The CBL did not state where the INC Ransomware originated from.
The CBL was hacked on 12 December 2023, forcing it to shut down its network and systems including the national payment system. Electronic interbank transfers were suspended causing chaos. Local banks were forced to transact manually.
The bank’s systems were restored on 22 December 2023.
