For the first time massive DDoS attacks hit Russian banks in 2016

A number of prolonged DDoS attacks hit at least five Russian banks this week and experts suspect the involvement of the Mirai Botnet once again.

A wave of DDoS attacks hit at least five Russian banks with prolonged DDoS attacks this week.

Among the victims of the DDoS attacks against the online banking services there are Sberbank and Alfabank banks.

The string of DDoS attacks began on Tuesday afternoon and lasted over two days.

According to an unnamed Russian Central Bank, official the attackers used a botnet of IoT devices, likely a Mirai botnet. The Mirai botnet is the same threat that targeted the Dyn DNS service causing the Internet outage for a large portion of the US netizens.

Both Sberbank and Alfabank have confirmed the DDoS attacks against their systems, but Alfabank downplayed the incident classifying the attack as a “weak” one.

“We registered a first attack early in the morning … the next attack in the evening involved several waves, each of them was twice as powerful as the previous one. Bank’s cybersecurity noticed and located the attack in time. There have been no problems in client online services,” Sberbank representative said.

“There was an attack, but it was relatively weak. It did not affect Alfabank’s business systems in any way,” the bank told RIA Novosti.

According to the experts from Kaspersky Lab, this is the first time that massive DDoS attacks hit Russian banks this year.

A previous string of DDoS attacks against banks was observed in October 2015.

[adrotate banner=”9″]

Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – DDoS attacks, Russia)