Kathmandu, Sept 22: Share trading will resume as usual on Tuesday after a ransomware attack forced the Nepal Stock Exchange to suspend the market on Monday.
NEPSE said the technical problem at Data Hub Pvt Ltd, which stores backups of the Trade Management Systems used by 72 brokerage companies, had been resolved.
In a notice published on its website on Tuesday morning, NEPSE said all transactions through the 72 brokers’ systems would operate normally.
Nepal’s share market has 90 brokerage companies. Of them, 72 use the TMS provided by NEPSE. The system was developed by YCO Pvt Ltd, while Data Hub manages its backups and infrastructure.
Data Hub informed YCO on Sunday that the infrastructure hosting the TMS had come under a ransomware attack at around 5:30 am. It warned that trading might need to be halted because of possible security risks. YCO then notified the brokers and NEPSE.
Data Hub said it had taken a complete backup of the infrastructure at around 4 am, before the attack, and stored it separately. The affected systems were not immediately restored because the attack might have spread to connected networks.
Technical teams conducted security checks and forensic analysis before beginning restoration. YCO warned brokers that the incident might also have affected systems linked to CDS and Clearing, payment services and other connected platforms.
The TMS used by 72 brokers remained unavailable on Monday. Although brokers using other data centres could have operated, NEPSE suspended the entire market to avoid unequal treatment of investors.
The backup was later found to be safe and usable, helping technicians restore the system. Further examination is still needed to determine how far the attack spread and whether any data was affected.
With the problem resolved, regular trading will resume from 11 am to 3 pm on Tuesday.
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