Nearly 300 Indian banks faced an outage due to a ransomware attack

A ransomware attack caused nearly 300 Indian banks to shut down temporarily, restricting several users from transacting using UPI, IMPS, NEFT, and RTGS methods of payments. However, only cooperative and regional banks were affected by this ransomware attack, which directly hit the service providers of these banks, C-Edge Technologies. Also Read: High-Risk Security Alert Issued For Microsoft Windows, Office, And Azure: What Should You Do?

Ransomware caused an outage of services offered by Indian regional banks

Ransomware hit C-Edge Technologies on Wednesday (July 31), which made its baking infrastructure inaccessible, resulting in the shutdown of banking services for over 300 banks. C-Edge Technologies is a Mumbai-based firm that offers online banking infrastructure to several cooperative and regional banks. Hence, Wednesday’s ransomware attack caused an outage in online banking services such as NEFT, RTGS, IMPS, and UPI. Also Read: How A Pakistan Malware Made $3 Million Infecting 2 Million Users: Report

NPCI addressed the issue and temporarily isolated C-Edge Technologies from the retail payment ecosystem. This also resulted in a shutdown of online banking services for banks that didn’t face such an issue. Also Read: This Microsoft AI Agent Automatically Detects And Blocks Malware To End Your Worries: Here's How

“It has been brought to NPCI’s notice that C-Edge Technologies Ltd, a technology service provider who caters mostly to cooperative and regional rural banks, has been possibly impacted by a Ransomware attack impacting a few of their systems. To prevent larger impact to the payment ecosystem, NPCI has temporarily isolated C-Edge Technologies from accessing the retail payment systems operated by NPCI. Customers of banks serviced by C-Edge will not be able to access payment systems during the period of isolation.”

It’s worth noting that C-Edge Technologies is a joint venture between Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and the State Bank of India. NPCI is among other bodies that regulate the firm.

NPCI hasn’t shared an update after its first post addressing the issue. That said, we’ll have to wait to know if the services are back to normal.