BY WEGAYEHU MULUNEH
The Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE) has announced that there has been no damage to customers' personal accounts due to a system disruption that occurred last Friday night.
In a statement Monday, CBE President Abe Sano clarified that a technical error during internal system updates on Friday, March 15th, led to irregular financial transactions. This incident, he stressed, was not a cyberattack.
CBE identified over 490,000 money exchanges on the night of March 15th, including legitimate transactions.
University students were flagged as being primarily involved in exploiting the system error.
The bank, however, is working with these students, and most are cooperating and returning the erroneously obtained transactions. As a result, "CBE will not press charges against these cooperative students,” said the president.
President Sano reiterated CBE's robust cybersecurity measures, highlighting the bank's successful defense against numerous cyberattacks, even from well-resourced institutions and from statute-sponsored ones. He assured customers that the financial impact of the incident is very minimal compared to the bank's overall assets.