No breach was recorded, the bank explains

Dec 6, 2016 10:28 GMT  ·  By

Russia said that it recently managed to block a major cyberattack aimed at local banks, and now state-controlled VTB reveals that it was also targeted by hackers with a DDoS attack.

VTB did not say who targeted its servers, but the bank explained in a statement that no breach was recorded and all systems were running as normal following the attack.

“A DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack was carried out against VTB Group internet sites,” the bank explained according to AFP. “Our IT infrastructure is working as normal and the bank's clients are not experiencing any difficulties.”

FSS: Major cyberattack planned for December 5

The Federal Security Service (FSS) in Russia recently revealed that it received information of a major cyberattack planned by a foreign intelligence service against its banking system, but the country blocked the breach before it even started.

FSS says that these attacks were supposed to be launched from the Netherlands using servers owned by a Ukrainian hosting firm called BlazingFast. The web hosting provider, however, denied the claims, explaining that it discovered no evidence of a possible cyberattack launched against Russia using its servers and pointed out that Russian authorities didn’t contact the firm to discuss such a matter.

“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,” the company said.

It’s not yet clear if this new attack is in any way linked to the attempt that the FSS has already blocked, but once again, very little details are provided about who was behind the attacks aimed at Russian banks.

Last week, Russia’s central bank was hacked and no less than $31 million were stolen from its accounts, with FSS saying that attackers originally planned to steal more money, but the breach was detected and blocked before this happened.