The website of the Bank of South Sudan appears to be inaccessible since April 7, 2023 as mysterious online site calling itself Anonymous South Sudan claims responsible for the malicious act.
The Central Bank website apparently suffered a major technical fault that renders it inaccessible to internet users.
Google search engine feedback reads ‘connection has timed out’ and said the site is temporarily unavailable.
The Bank has not yet commented on the issue. The last post on its Facebook page was a congratulatory message to the Presidency on the eve of Easter holidays on Friday.
A regional cyber security expert told Eye Radio on condition of anonymity that the website has been taken over by an inside administrator.
“So this is not a hacking incident as such but rather what we call an account takeover incident driven by an insider threat,” he said.
“Account Takeover occurs when an individual or an entity loses access and control over their system, website or account.”
“And it’s backed by an insider threat simply because there’s someone with some level of access that could have potentially brought down the website, all backed by a motive/intention.”
Meanwhile, on Thursday, the site called Anonymous South Sudan posted that it would disable the Bank website and restore it, only when the exchange rate comes down to 40,000 South Sudanese pounds per 100 US dollars.
“Message from ANONYMOUS, the Bank of South Sudan website https://boss.gov.ss will be down from today at 12:00AM this night. the attack will continue until 100 Dollar become 40,000,” read the statement it posted on Thursday.
Two days later, the malicious site posted that the “Bank of South Sudan website is down!”
It is not clear if Anonymous South Sudan is part of the wider Anonymous – an international activist and hacktivist collective and movement responsible for various cyberattacks against several government institutions and agencies.
