Biggest Bank in Venezuela Suffers 5 Day Outage After Hack Attempt – Emerging Markets Bitcoin News

The Bank of Venezuela, one of the largest state-owned banks in the country, is now experiencing a downturn that has left its customers without services for five days. The bank issued a statement on PR, saying this was the result of a “terrorist attack” on the national financial system, carried out in the form of a mass hack. More than 16 million customers are still without banking services at the time of writing.

Bank of Venezuela Hacked in “Terrorist Attack”

The Bank of Venezuela, one of the largest financial institutions in the country, serving more than 16 million customers, is facing a setback that has left its online platform without service for five days. Bank customers began complaining about the breakdown of these services on September 15, when some of them took their concerns to social networks.

At the time a bank worker told local media that the outage was a product of several adaptations that were made to the bank’s online platform to support the plan to rename Digital Bolivar. The bank published a statement on PR via social media that said it was working to restore the service on 16 September.

However, that did not happen. On September 17, the bank issued yet another assertion revealing that the institution was hacked as an attempt to perpetuate a “terrorist attack” against the national financial system. The statement also told users that their financial information is secure, and that the bank is still working to restore the services. No further details were given.

16 Million Users Affected; Announced Restitution

The aftermath of this left more than 16 million users without banking services for a week. This means that many people could not buy goods and services and they are still waiting to make their daily expenses.

Some of these users complained about this and said that this malfunction banned them from buying food and medicine for their families. Nevertheless the Bank of Venezuela out a statement stating their services will be returned. The statement claims that services will be available again on September 20 and that the institution has managed to maintain the integrity of the data, which means that users will be able to access their accounts with the same information.

This is one of the longest-running failures any bank has faced in the country’s history and reinforces the importance of the existence of an alternative financial system such as cryptocurrencies that would help deal with such an event.

What do you think of the Bank of Venezuela’s 5-day service outage? Tell us in the comments section below.

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