Pierluigi Paganini December 02, 2016

According to the FSB unnamed foreign hackers are planning to undermine Russian Banks with cyber attacks and PSYOPS via social media.

The Kremlin is accusing unnamed foreign hackers of plotting to undermine the Russian banks in the country.

The Russian Government believes that foreign powers plan to conduct a PSYOps to destabilize the banks. Hackers could combine the diffusion of fake documents about the status of Russian banks with massive cyber attacks.

The news was spread by the Russia’s intelligence service, the FSB. According to the Russian intelligence, a group of servers in the Netherlands and leased to the Ukrainian web hosting firm BlazingFast were ready to launch an assault next Monday.

“Russia’s domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Security Service (FSB), said that the servers to be used in the alleged cyber attack were located in the Netherlands and registered to a Ukrainian web hosting company called BlazingFast.” reported the Reuters.

“The attack, which was to target major national and provincial banks in several Russian cities, was meant to start on Dec. 5, the FSB said in a statement.”

Servers physically located in the Netherlands and leased to BlazingFast, a Ukrainian web-hosting firm, were primed to launch an assault next Monday.

“It was planned that the cyber attack would be accompanied by a mass send-out of SMS messages and publications in social media of a provocative nature regarding a crisis in the Russian banking system, bankruptcies and license withdrawals.” reads a statement issued by the FSB. 

“The FSB is carrying out the necessary measures to neutralise threats to Russia’s economic and information security.”

The Russia’s central bank confirmed to the Reuters agency that it was aware of the imminent threat, for this reason, it is working with the security services.

“The situation is under control. Banks have been given necessary guidance,” the central bank said. “Banks have been given necessary guidance.”

Anton Onoprichuk, the director of the firm BlazingFast, told Reuters that he was not aware of the alleged plan of attack, neither the FSB nor any other intelligence agency had been in touch with him.

Recently Russian banks were targeted by a series of massive DDoS attacks powered by the Mirai IoT botnet.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – Russian banks, hacking)