Guaranty Trust Bank (GTBank) experienced a significant website outage from Tuesday night through early Thursday morning, which has now been clarified as a domain name system (DNS) issue rather than a cyberattack. The interruption led to widespread speculation about a potential hacking incident; however, insights from industry sources suggest a different scenario.

According to four sources familiar with the situation who spoke with TechCabal, the disruption stemmed from complications with the bank’s DNS configuration. “They had issues with their domain name registration, and they had to make some changes or move it to a different domain name service,” explained a Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at a leading Nigerian fintech firm, who chose to remain anonymous. This indicates that GTBank might have overlooked the renewal of its domain name, potentially leading to a lapse in ownership.

A web developer, also speaking on the condition of anonymity, added, “If GTBank has already patented its [website] name, they simply need to report the matter to the domain host, and after a few processes they can retrieve the site. It is not a matter that can be simply resolved in a day. It will take time.” These comments suggest that the problem may have been administrative rather than malicious.

At the time of writing, GTBank had not provided an official comment on the matter. The outage, which lasted for approximately a day and a half, led to mixed reports regarding website accessibility. While some customers were able to access the site intermittently, others encountered ongoing issues. These problems may be attributed to DNS propagation delays, a process that can affect how quickly changes to domain records are reflected across various servers.

This incident mirrors past occurrences in the tech world. In 2015, Google faced a similar situation when it failed to renew its domain for “google.com,” allowing a former employee to purchase it briefly for $12. Google, which operates its own domain service provider, Google Domains, swiftly reversed the transaction. Microsoft also experienced a domain renewal oversight with “hotmail.co.uk” in 2003.

Another developer theorized that the delay might have been caused by internal administrative processes or vendor payment issues, stating, “The custodian of the email tied to the domain name may have simply stopped working at the bank and didn’t hand it over to someone else.”

Furthermore, some of the ongoing access problems could be related to HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS), a security feature used by banks to enforce secure encrypted connections and protect customer information. HSTS issues can sometimes result in temporary access difficulties as security settings are updated.

The clarity on the issue underscores the importance of meticulous domain management and timely renewals for financial institutions to avoid service disruptions and potential confusion among their users.