National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) announced in a statement that an attack by ransomware on associate technology service provider C-Edge Technologies Ltd. affected several co-ops and Regional Rural Banks (RRBs) on Wednesday, causing a suspension in retail payments.
Customers of the impacted banks will not be able to access the payment systems until the restoration process is finished, since the NPCI temporarily halted all retail payments in those banks.
NPCI is the parent company of all Indian retail payment systems and provides a range of services and products including IMPS, Bharat BillPay, BHIM UPI, and RuPay.
The only institutions impacted are co-ops and tiny RRBs, according to an NPCI official who responded to Reporters under anonymity.
Individuals who are representatives of a regulatory body claimed that to prevent any wider impact, over 300 small banks have been cut off from the nation’s larger payment network.
The problem will be contained hopefully by tomorrow” he added.
“C-Edge Technologies…has been possibly impacted by a ransomware attack impacting a few of their systems,” according to a statement issued by NPCI late in the evening. This led to C-Edge’s temporary exclusion from accessing NPCI-operated retail payment systems.
According to a recent report titled “India Breach Report” by FalconFeeds, an entity of cyber-security firm Technisanct, India saw 388 data breaches, 107 data leaks, 39 ransomware group operations, and 59 occurrences of illicit sale of access credentials or leaks during the first half of 2024.
Per the research, the main targets were the sectors of education, government, and technology.
Severe attacks were also directed towards the healthcare, banking, manufacturing, and consumer services sectors.
We earlier reported that customers of McDonald’s reported having trouble placing their orders at the fast food chain’s stores across the world.
The fast food giant briefly halted operations at a number of its branches in Japan.