The Bank of Zambia was hit with a ransomware attack by the group called Hive, and the bank refused to pay the ransom to the hackers.
Last week, the Bank of Zambia, the country’s central bank, disclosed that recent technical outages resulted from a cyberattack.
According to a press release, the Bank of Zambia wishes to inform members of the public that it experienced a partial disruption to some of its Information Technology (IT) applications on Monday 9th May 2022. The disruption, which affected some systems at the Bank such as the Bureau De Change Monitoring System and the Website, emanated from a suspected cybersecurity incident. They stated that the systems have been fully restored now.
The Bank of Zambia did not disclose the details of the cyberattack, but the Hive ransomware operation claimed to have encrypted the bank’s Network Attached Storage (NAS) device.
However, instead of paying the ransom, the bank representatives responded to the ransom negotiation by making fun of the hackers.
Bloomberg reported that the Bank’s Technical Director, Greg Nsofu, said that only some test data may have been leaked, and that they had protected the bank’s core systems, so it was not necessary to engage with the threat actors.
Hive ransomware which was first observed in June 2021, has already made its mark as one of the most prolific and aggressive ransomware families today.
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