Botched upgrade at Belgian bank Argenta sparks phishing frenzy

Belgian bank Argenta has apologised for a botched tech plumbing upgrade that delayed transfers and confronted customers with incorrect balance data. The bank, which has 1.4 million Belgian customers, blamed the problems on post-upgrade issues with the data transfer mechanism between its two data centres, among other things. …

[Anonymous Coward]

No COBOL, what fun!!

Love it! I've been waiting for years for the first bank to walk away from COBOL, and experience the variability - and excitement! - of modern computer languages. Finally, they took the plunge ... and what fun they're having!! Now that is truly a radical change.

[Tom Paine]

Re: No COBOL, what fun!!

I'll just leave this here

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Challenger_bank

[Ole Juul]

Re: No COBOL, what fun!!

Indeed, moving from what works to what might work.

[Sam Therapy]

Eau bolleurx.

Coat... getting.

[sanmigueelbeer]

scammers had attempted to take advantage of the confusion by sending Belgians phishing emails. Argenta is warning customers to disregard all such messages.

So how can anyone tell which one is the fake email and which one is the real email?

Customers who urgently needed to transfer money and who were unable to visit a bank branch were advised to email the bank with as subject 'dringende overschrijving' (urgent transfer) and include the details of the transaction to be carried out as an attachment.

ROFL! This is so backwards.

[Pascal Monett]

"It's unbelievable that a bank can get away with a problem like this these days"

No, it's not. Firstly, because people are just too damn lazy to actually go through all the hassle of changing bank, notifying all the required entities of the change and redoing all their accounts elsewhere. They prefer to just grin and bear it.

And secondly, the banks are all the same, so why bother ?

[Anonymous South African Coward]

I'll call that spear phishing. With a railgun.