Impeccable sources however revealed that hackers had gained access and disabled the entire mobile banking system leaving clients in an awkward position. One of the clients claimed that “Stima Sacco has been offline for almost a month now. They say it’s an upgrade but what upgrade takes a month? I suspect a major heist coming up,” one member tweeted
Members of Stima Sacco were last week sent panicking after hackers allegedly gained access to their accounts after disrupting the mobile banking system. The worst was experienced was witnessed last Friday when some clients could not access their accounts to make withdrawals. Mostly affected by the hacking are members who have been using Stima Sacco as their salary accounts, unfortunately, such members could not access their salaries, and most failed to take their kids to schools.
Stima Sacco members are mostly drawn from the ministry of energy and related state corporations like Kenya Power and Lighting Company (KPC), Kenya Electricity Generating Corporation (Ken-Gen), The Rural Electricity and Renewable Energy Corporation (REREC), the Geothermal Electricity Generation Corporation and many others directly or indirectly involved in the country’s energy sector.
Sources say that Sacco’s IT department has not been able to block the hackers over the past three weeks claiming that they are doing some upgrades on the system. Irate clients now say that upgrade of the system cannot take more than one day and even if Sacco was upgrading the system, clients ought to have been informed in advance.
Impeccable sources however revealed that hackers had gained access and disabled the entire mobile banking system leaving clients in an awkward position. One of the clients claimed that “Stima Sacco has been offline for almost a month now. They say it’s an upgrade but what upgrade takes a month? I suspect a major heist coming up,” one member tweeted.
Despite automated responses from Stima Sacco’s customer care team, many depositors remain concerned about the safety of their hard-earned cash and personal data. In the wake of recent cyber-attacks targeting local lenders, Stima Sacco’s prolonged service disruption has left members fearing for the worst.
“They are sending us messages confirming some services are back, which you find they’re not when you try. I think they are just trying to give us hope, it’s hard,” an affected client complained. “I have made over 4 trips to Stima Sacco physically. Systems are down. They have 8 credit officer desks but only 3 are available and 1 is always closed. 4 credit control desks only 2 working. You can’t even withdraw bulk cash from their M-PESA,” a member added.
Efforts to trace the CEO Gamaliel Hassan Anyanzwa for a comment proved fruitless, their Public Relations Jack Kulova claimed that he was held up in Meru County.
