THE Central Bank of Lesotho says it has invited independent hackers to hack its system to assess its strengths and weaknesses. The test, called a penetration test, comes barely seven months after the bank was hacked in December last year in a move that seriously disrupted the bank’s operations.
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Certain transactions between commercial banks were also temporarily disrupted because of the hacking.
Central Bank of Lesotho’s deputy governor, Lehlomela Mohapi, told the parliamentary Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on Tuesday that the bank decided to test its systems’ strengths and weaknesses after fortification following last year’s hacking.
Mohapi talked about the hack test after a member of the PAC, Mokhothu Makhalanyane, asked if the bank and the Accountant General’s office did anything to ensure safety after the hacking.
“Do you have information on the attacks that happened to the IFMIS at the Ministry of Finance and at the Central Bank?” Makhalanyane asked.
The Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS) is a system that supports the management of public sector budgetary, financial, and accounting operations. It promotes better public financial management with a centralised registry of public sector revenues and expenditures.
Makhalanyane asked if they have now analysed how the hacking happened.
“The recent hacks were bizarre. Do you have any culprits?”
Mohapi told the commission that they have called upon independent hackers to hack the Central Bank networks.
“We were hit by a ransomware on one of our test servers,” he said.
He said the test servers were created to cater for the commercial banks.
“That server was hit by a malware that later spread inside to every machine in the bank.”
He disclosed that the malware affected virtual environment servers “but key systems and core banking networks were not affected”.
He said hours after the attack they immediately removed the bank from the internet, which led to the local commercial banks cancelling their payment systems.
He added that a forensic audit was also done on the hacking “and we then fortified our systems”.
“We reconfigured all of our networks completely.”
He added that after identifying the problem the operation to remove malware was done in 11 days.
“We think we now have a much stronger network than we had at that time.”
He also said on Monday he was given a penetration test report where an independent hacker is allowed to try to penetrate the systems as a simulation.
He said the previous attack had caught them by surprise because it happened four months after a penetration test had been conducted.
“Our firewalls are now stronger so we have asked hackers to hack us to see our levels,” Mohapi said.
The Ministry of Finance’s Treasurer, ’Malehlonolo Mahase, told the committee that IFMIS was attacked in 2020 “but recently there was an attack in the government account which did not affect the IFMIS”.
Mahase said in 2020 after the malware attack they separated IFMIS from other systems and even created its own network in its own office.
“We now use two data setters,” Mahase said.
“We want to protect IFMIS from being attacked,” she said.
She also said they used to hold meetings every Tuesday with the minister and technicians, including IFMIS and International Monetary Fund experts, to scrutinise everything and ensure safety.
Nkheli Liphoto
