US Presidential Elections held on November 8th,2016 triggered an unnecessary panic among US populace making them believe that Russia will try to influence the US election polls through cyber attacks. But as per the latest reports, things have gone the other way.
According to security firm Kaspersky, the state-owned Sberbank was hit by hackers who succeeded in overwhelming the bank website with DDoS attacks. It has been reported that in last two days five of the biggest Russian Banks were hit by cyber criminals.
Kaspersky reported that on November 8,2016, early morning, Sberbank was hit with a lot of data requests for 60 minutes. Then the cyber attacks became more persistent from midday which lasted for almost 12 hours.
In a statement issued by Sberbank, the spokesperson said that they were in a helpless situation as they could not neutralize the attack without affecting the operations of the website. As a result of the scenario, they had to shut down the website for almost the whole working day. The bank confirmed that it suffered almost 68 similar attacks in 2016, but the one which took place early this week could be ranked among the biggest it had faced.
The Moscow-based security firm has added some more details into its press release saying the Sberbank was hit with 660,000 requests being sent per second using a network of more than 24,000 hijacked devices located in more than 30 countries. This includes United States, India, China, Taiwan, and Israel.
Although the country’s largest lender and state-controlled Sberbank has come into open to discussing the attack details , the rest of the four banks were silent on the ordeal they went through, on the day of US elections 2016.
In a recent NBC report of USA, it was concluded that US cybersecurity forces have taken down the networks of several Russian Power stations and financial institutions at the end of last weekend. If Russia, tried to interfere in the US elections, the federal government was ready to offer a counter attack.
Kaspersky feels that the cyber attack on the Russian bank could have been a state-sponsored attack. But as the evidence is nil, the security firm chose not to name any nation or a group as forces behind these attacks.
