Central Depository Services (India) (CDSL), the country’s largest depository, shared a status update on pending settlement activities after trade-related activity and a malware attack disrupted back-end operations.
On Friday, November 18, 2022, “Central Depository Services (India) Limited (CDSL) detected malware in a few of its internal machines,” the company informed the stock exchanges, according to MINT.
“The CDSL systems after due checks and validations have been made live. The systems are functional to carry out depository activities,” the company statement read.
It further noted that in coordination with the other Market Infrastructure Institutions (MIIs), the pending settlement-related activities pertaining to the Business Day – Friday, November 18, 2022, have been successfully completed.
A cyber attack on a few of CDSL’s internal machines affected settlement services on Friday. Brokers said services such as pay-in, pay-out, pledge, or unpledged securities for margin were down due to system failure at the CDSL.
However, the company added that there was no prima facie compromise of investor data.
“As a matter of abundant caution, the Company immediately isolated the machines and disconnected itself from other capital market constituents. As per initial findings, there is no reason to believe that any confidential information or the investor data has been compromised,” CDSL noted.
The CDSL team had reported the incident to the relevant authorities and was working with its cyber security advisors to analyse the impact.
Malware attacks occur when malicious software executes unauthorised actions on the victim’s system. The malware software may lock computers and block file access instead of payment.
