In the early hours of Thursday morning, Guaranty Trust Bank (GTBank), one of Nigeria’s leading financial institutions, restored its website after an unexpected 36-hour outage. Initial reports speculated that the downtime was due to a cybersecurity attack, but insiders have revealed that the cause was far less dramatic—a misconfiguration related to the bank’s domain name system (DNS).
The Incident
GTBank’s website went offline late Tuesday night, sparking widespread concern among customers and prompting rumors of a possible cyberattack. However, four sources with knowledge of the situation disclosed that the issue stemmed from the bank’s failure to properly manage its domain name registration, leading to a temporary disruption.
A Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at a prominent Nigerian fintech company, who preferred to remain anonymous, explained that the problem was likely due to the bank forgetting to renew its domain name ownership or needing to migrate it to a different DNS service. This oversight may have presented an opportunity for opportunistic individuals to purchase the domain name, potentially causing further delays as GTBank worked to reclaim it.
Domain Name Lapses: A Common Occurrence
Lapses in renewing domain names are more common than one might expect. In 2015, even tech giant Google forgot to renew its domain, leading a former employee to purchase “google.com” for just $12. Google swiftly reversed the transaction, given that they also owned the domain service provider, Google Domains. Similarly, Microsoft faced a similar issue in 2003 with their “hotmail.co.uk” domain.
In GTBank’s case, one web developer suggested that the person responsible for managing the domain renewal might have left the company without passing on their responsibilities, exacerbating the situation. Additionally, the bureaucratic process involved in vendor payments could have further delayed the renewal process.
The Aftermath and Restoration
While some GTBank customers were able to access the website by Thursday morning, others continued to experience difficulties. This inconsistency in access could be attributed to DNS propagation, a process that can take time to spread changes across all global servers. Another potential cause could be the bank’s use of HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS), a security feature that ensures users only connect to the website via a secure, encrypted connection.
Despite the initial panic and speculation, GTBank’s website is now back online, and the bank has not commented on the matter publicly. This incident serves as a reminder of the importance of domain management, even for large, well-established organizations, and how minor oversights can lead to significant disruptions.