A massive DDoS attack took down the site of the German financial agency BaFin

A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack took the site of the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) down.

A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack took the site of the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) down for some days.

It is not clear who is behind the DDoS attack, but the media speculate that it was launched by pro-Russian hacktivists in response to the German financial and military support to Ukraine.

The BaFin website was included in January in a list of targets published by the pro-Russia group Killnet on its Telegram channel.

The German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) is the national financial regulator in Germany, it is a federal agency under the jurisdiction of the Federal Ministry of Finance. The BaFin is responsible for overseeing banks, insurance companies, investment firms, and other financial institutions. BaFin also regulates the securities markets and the financial services industry.

The Authority announced the adoption of adequate security precautions and effective defensive measures immediately after the attack started on Friday, September 1st, 2023.

BaFin stated that all other systems were not impacted and worked without restrictions.

BleepingComputer pointed out that the site under attack hosts a database containing data of registered companies and public tenders, a job vacancies section, and also a platform for whistleblowers used to anonymously report violations.

At the time of this publishing, the site of the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority appears to have been fully restored.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, DDoS)

Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.