Mexico’s central bank has revealed investigations into an apparent hack attempt of its payment systems in at least three domestic financial institutions.
The head of the central bank’s own payment platform, Lorenza Martinez, said connections to the central bank’s payment system at two domestic banks and a brokerage were compromised, speaking to a local radio station on Monday.
As reported by Reuters, she said:
At this time, both the institutions and ourselves are monitoring in a diagnostic way to identify what the problem was.
The institutions impacted were not identified by name and the central bank official stressed that no money was stolen or missing.
Notably, she denied suggestions and reports that the central bank’s payment system itself had been compromised.
“This has not happened,” she said, adding that the vulnerability was in the internet application used by some institutions to connect to the central bank’s payments platform.
Meanwhile, Mexican bank Banorte said on Friday via Twitter that it had suffered an ‘incident’ affecting the bank’s connection to the central bank’s payment system. Banorte added, on Monday, that it had not been the target of a cyber attack in a written statement to Reuters, only stating that “some clients saw a delay in executing transactions” due to Friday’s hiccup.
Previously in January, hackers attempted to steal from Bancomext, a government-run export bank, a move that officials said was unsuccessful.
“Authorities are important as there’s a “lack of detailed and sufficient information about attacks of this type that have occurred against financial institutions,” the central bank said as quoted by Bloomberg. “That’s because institutions may have incentives to not reveal such information out of fear that their reputation with clients could be damaged.”
Image credit: Wikimedia.
