Russia has made it official that it has succeeded in neutralizing a cyber attack on its financial system. The federal nation added that the attack was conducted by foreign spies working on servers based in the Netherlands.
As per the Federal Security Service- a domestic intelligence agency of Russia, state-owned actors have hired foreign spies in order to cast a coordinated wave of cyber attacks in Russia’s banking system from December 5th,2016.
But the FSB’s proactive cyber security team uncovered the plot in time and succeeded in neutralizing its effect on the state-run banking servers. The servers from which the cyber attack was planned were registered on the name of a Ukraine web hosting firm called Blazing Fast located in Kiev. And the attack was targeted at major National and Provincial banks in several Russian cities from early next week.
According to a Reuters report released this morning, the cyber attack would have been accompanied by a mass send-out of SMS messages and publications in social media which would spill economic and information security content of Russian Banking systems, bankruptcies, and license withdrawals.
In a fresh statement to Reuters, Central Bank of Russia said that it was aware of such cyber threats in advance and was also aware of the nations conducting such practices. The financial institution said that its cyber security team is not only capable of dealing with the situation but was also potent to counteract any attack.
On November 11th, 2016- just a couple of days after US elections; Russian lenders Sberbank and Alfa-Bank said that they were hit by a cyber attack and more than 2 billion rubles were stolen in this web crime. Their statement indirectly hinted of a state-sponsored attack carried out by a US hackers group.
