14 DAY TRIAL // Russia has announced that it managed to block a major cyber-attack aimed at the country’s financial system and launched by an unnamed foreign intelligence service.
No further details have been provided about this foreign service, but Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSS) explained in a statement that hackers were targeting the largest banks in the country.
The attack was supposed to start on December 5, FSS says, and also included an avalanche of social media posts and text messages falsely revealing “a crisis of credit and financial system in Russia,” as well as the revocation of licenses of several banks.
The FSS explained in a press statement that it discovered that the attacks were planned from servers belonging to Ukrainian web hosting company BlazingFast and located in the Netherlands.
Web hosting firm: No signs of a possible attack
But BlazingFast says that it already investigated these claims and no evidence of a planned attack against Russia was found, pointing out that it’s willing to work with authorities for more details. Furthermore, BlazingFast says that Russian authorities didn’t contact the company to discuss the possible attack.
“We reviewed all our systems and network and we have not found any abnormal pattern changes that could lead to FSB's allegations. We must assume FSB has been able to handle the situation without the need of BlazingFast's cooperation. Nevertheless, we hereby publicly demonstrate our willingness to cooperate with any legal entity,” the Ukrainian hosting firm said in a post on Facebook.
The report published by FSS is full of vague information, and it lacks specifics on the foreign intelligence service that could have targeted Russia. Furthermore, the FSS doesn’t reveal how exactly it stopped hackers or how they planned to breach Russian banks.
On the other hand, this new report does nothing more than to fuel the tension between Russia and the United States, especially because US intelligence agencies have already blamed Russia for attacks during the presidential campaign and threatened with future cyber-attacks.
It was also recently revealed that hackers managed to breach Russia's central bank, stealing no less than $31 million. It's not clear, however, if this hack was part of the cyber-attack that FSS claims it blocked.