Russia's VTB Bank targeted by a DDoS attack

According to Reuters, VTB Bank is the second-largest bank in Russia, and the attack affected its ability to access its mobile app and website. However, the bank’s representatives cited by the same source reassured clients that their data has remained safe. The state-owned bank was working on repelling the distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, which represents an attempt by hackers to flood a network with unusually high volumes of data traffic in order to cripple it. 

VTB  representatives said the majority of attacks had come from abroad, but that there was some traffic from Russian IP addresses as well. As a consequence, the bank will report all identified Russian IP addresses to law enforcement. 

Reuters reports that Russian government entities and state-owned companies have been targeted due to the ongoing events in Ukraine. The websites of the Kremlin, flagship carrier Aeroflot, and lender Sberbank, are some of the entities that have seen outages or temporary access issues. 

According to a report by Top10VPN, DDoS attacks originating from Ukraine increased 363% in March compared to the average before February this year. Moreover, infosecurity-magazine.com reveals that Ukraine set up a Telegram channel to guide and encourage an organisation of hacktivists to take aim at specific Russian targets. In November, VTB was singled out as a potential target on that channel.

Microsoft puts Europe on high alert

Following a series of cyber-attacks on Russian organisations, VTB Bank included, Microsoft has warned Europe of potential counters from Russia this winter. According to theregister.com, Microsoft warned that Russia will likely expand its ‘hybrid-war’ efforts beyond Ukraine. 

The same source reports on a cyber-attack from October, during which GRU-backed Sandworm deployed the Prestige ransomware against logistics and transportation networks in Poland and Ukraine. This represented the first war-related cyber-attack outside of Ukraine since the operation against Viasat, which took some satellites offline and knocked out the remote monitoring of thousands of wind turbines in Germany.  

Representatives from Microsoft’s Digital Threat Analysis Center described the Prestige event as a measured shift in Russia's cyber-attack strategy, as it showed a willingness by Moscow to use its cyber weapons against organisations outside Ukraine.