Exploding power supply hits St George bank

St George Bank's online banking services were knocked offline this morning when a power supply exploded.

A spokesperson for St George, which is Australia's fifth largest bank, told ZDNet Australia that online banking customers would have experienced difficulties trying to log on until late morning.

"We did have some problems earlier this morning ... a power supply blew up.

"There was some overloading on a server and we also had a hardware fault but that has all been rectified and it has been stable since 10.30 this morning," the spokesperson said.

Although the St George Web site seems to have been unaffected by the problem, customers trying to access their accounts this morning were greeted with an error message asking them to "try again later".

Last month, Westpac claimed a hardware failure caused several disruptions to its online banking service. Just days earlier, the National Australia Bank's online service was hit by a DDoS attack, which the bank suspects may have been launched by phishers.