Russia's No. 2 bank VTB suffers largest DDoS in history
Claims attack came from outside Russia
Russia's state-owned bank VTB has been hit by the most intense distributed denial of service (DDoS) it has ever suffered.
Following the attack, the bank issued a warning about a temporary access issues with its mobile app and website, but reassured customers their data was still secure.
'The bank's technological infrastructure is under an unprecedented cyber attack from abroad,' said VTB, according to Reuters. 'The largest not only this year, but in the whole time the bank has operated.'
VTB said it was taking steps to fend off the attack, which it claims originated from outside Russia.
DDoS attacks target online services and websites and overwhelm them with massive volumes of traffic that the server or network cannot accommodate.
The main goal behind such attacks is to create problems for the business by making their website inoperable. The disruption also causes issues for individual users, who are prevented from accessing the services they require.
According to VTB, the majority of the malicious traffic used in the attack originated outside Russia, although some requests came from Russian IP addresses.
The bank intends to provide law enforcement with those Russian addresses for verification.
Hackers have targeted several state-owned businesses and government organisations in Russia over the past nine months in response to the country's illegal invasion of Ukraine.
Websites belonging to the Kremlin, Aeroflot and Sberbank have all experienced brief outages or access issues.
Last week, it emerged that threat actors have been targeting Russian organisations with a new strain of malware designed to erase all data on a compromised computer.
Russian news website Izvestia said the wiper, which masquerades as ransomware, was used in attacks on Russian mayor's offices and courts.
Meanwhile, attacks on websites and infrastructure in Lithuania, Norway, and the United States this year have been attributed to or claimed by pro-Russian hackers.
Slovak cybersecurity firm ESET said last week that Russian state-sponsored threat operation Sandworm was using a novel strain of ransomware known as RansomBoggs in a new wave of attacks targeting Ukrainian organisations, first seen in late November.
Also last month, a 'sophisticated' cyberattack on the European Parliament website caused service disruptions moments after members voted to designate Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism. European Parliament President Roberta Metsola said a pro-Kremlin group had claimed responsibility for the attack.
Earlier this year, researchers discovered the HermeticWiper malware on many Ukrainian organisations' networks, hours before Russia invaded.
Microsoft said in a June report that Russia was targeting countries supporting Ukraine - especially the USA and Poland - in the ongoing war.
Since the start of the war, Microsoft has identified more than 100 organisations in 42 countries that have been impacted by the attacks. Over 60% of the activity targeted entities in NATO states and the USA was the main country targeted, accounting for 12% of the worldwide total.