14 DAY TRIAL // UK customers of HSBC had an unpleasant surprise this morning when they found out their online banking portal was offline. Later during the day, bank officials acknowledged the incident and blamed it on a DDoS attack the bank's IT staff managed to mitigate.
"HSBC UK internet banking was attacked this morning. We successfully defended our systems. We are working hard to restore services, and normal service is now being resumed. We apologise for any inconvenience," said bank officials in a series of tweets sent out this morning.
Bank officials later said they've called in law enforcement to investigate the cyber-attack, and later urged users to visit their local HSBC branch for urgent transactions.
At the time of this article, the bank's IT staff restored both the Web and mobile banking portals but also said that the attack was still raging on.
Because today was the normal payday for most UK business, many employees could not access their accounts to make payments and check their balances.
The attack also affected self-employed professionals that were busy filing their annual tax returns, which couldn't access their online bank accounts.
Annual tax returns must be filled in and filed by January 31.
Because of this issue and of the DDoS attack, HSBC announced that all the bank's major branches will also be open tomorrow, Saturday, January 30.
All our major branches will be open on Saturday. Please use our branch locator to find the nearest one. 2/2 https://t.co/a2Sbl4cWL5
— HSBC UK (@HSBC_UK) January 29, 2016