UK BANKING GROUP Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has been hit by a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack that took down its online services for the second time this week.

Earlier this week, RBS irked customers when an IT systems failure shut down its websites and caused its customers’ bank cards to fail. On Friday it admitted that it has been struck by a DDoS attack affecting its online services once again.

RBS took to Twitter to reveal news of the DDoS attack. It said, “Due to a surge in internet traffic directed at the Natwest website, customers experienced difficulties accessing some of our sites today.

“This deliberate surge of traffic is known as a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. We have taken action to restore affected sites.

“At no time was there any risk to customers. We apologise for the inconvenience caused.”

RBS has yet to comment further, so it’s still unclear which websites were downed in the attack, although the tweet suggested that the RBS, Natwest and Ulster Bank websites were all affected. It is also still unclear who was responsible for the DDoS attack.

However, it seems that the problems have not reached as far as those experienced by RBS customers earlier this week, when an IT systems failure struck the entire banking group.

Speaking about the system failure on Monday evening, RBS CEO Ross McEwan said on Tuesday, “Last night’s systems failure was unacceptable. Yesterday was a busy shopping day and far too many of our customers were let down, unable to make purchases and withdraw cash.

“For decades, RBS failed to invest properly in its systems. We need to put our customers’ needs at the centre of all we do. It will take time, but we are investing heavily in building IT systems our customers can rely on.

“I’m sorry for the inconvenience we caused our customers. We know we have to do better. I will be outlining plans in the New Year for making RBS the bank that our customers and the UK need it to be. This will include an outline of where we intend to invest for the future.”

Source: http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2317692/rbs-hit-by-ddos-attack-that-takes-down-online-services-again