The authorities have been quick to stress that this was not a hack, and no customer details have been compromised or accounts raided. Nevertheless, mobile payments were disrupted and customers were unable to access their ING accounts online. Cash withdrawals and bill payments via ATMs were not affected.
This followed separate Dutch banking problems earlier in the week. Before It’s News reported Saturday that “This week three banks, ING, Rabo and SNS, simultaneously suffered major computer malfunctions, leading to a temporary closure of their on-line facilities.” The report suggests that the “chances of a coincidence are close to zero.”
On Wednesday last week, DutchNews.nl reported, “Financial services group ING is grappling with a major internet banking breakdown which has led to thousands of people being unable to use their direct debit cards.” It continued, “The bank’s online banking website is currently out of action as thousands of people try to check their bank balances. The telephone help line is also very difficult to reach.” It’s not clear from this, however, whether the bank took its systems off-line because of the problems, whether those problems caused the online outage, or whether the sheer volume of customer calls effectively caused a customer DoS.
ING is not the only Dutch bank in the news. ABN Amro, the largest bank in The Netherlands, has arbitrarily converted its customers’ gold stocks into paper money. “ABN AMRO, the biggest Dutch bank, has sent a letter to its clients stating that they will no longer be able to take physical deliveries of the gold they have bought through ABN,” reports Voice of Russia. “Instead they are offered money at the current market rate for gold. Basically, instead of owning a risk free, physical asset (a gold bar or a gold coin), the bank’s clients now own a monetary claim on ABN AMRO, being exposed to the bank's credit risk.”
Put simply, ABN Amro has arbitrarily forced its customers to ‘sell’ their gold to the bank. Last month, Cypriot banks arbitrarily confiscated some of their customers’ deposits; and European banks have been on the alert for ‘runs’ on the system should depositors seek to withdraw their money en masse. The Dutch banks – and especially ING – are not in a position to withstand a serious run. Any such event would have serious implications for both the bank and the Dutch national economy.
It is against this background – the danger of mass withdrawals and the lack of anyone yet taking responsibility for the DDoS attack – that some critics of the banking system have voiced doubts over the real cause of the earlier technical problems and the later DDoS attack.