Russian banks repelled “the world’s most powerful” cyberattack, for which the Internet of Things was used

In August, Russian financial institutions repelled the largest cyberattack. In terms of intensity and duration, it turned out to be more powerful than the attacks of 2019–2020 and affected the activities of more than ten of the largest banks. The attack was carried out using the “Internet of Things” writes Kommersant.

Deputy Chairman of the Board of Sberbank Stanislav Kuznetsov spoke about the attack on the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum. According to him, last week the credit institution repulsed “the world’s most powerful attack on the financial sector.” “Such attacks were made on other financial structures in Russia. Some of them … had some kind of loss in their performance, ”he added.

According to Kuznetsov, the attack was carried out from the territory of other states, including through several thousand hacked webcams. Sources of the newspaper clarify that the peak of the attack fell on the period from 13 to 16 August, when its power exceeded 50 Gbps.

According to the Bank of Russia, the most powerful attack detected in 2019–2020 was carried out with an intensity of 49 Gbps. The longest attacks in 2019 lasted 11 hours 21 minutes, in 2020 – 4 hours 18 minutes.

The Bank of Russia confirmed the fact of the attack, which was revealed by the employees of the Center for Monitoring and Responding to Computer Attacks in the Credit and Financial Sphere (FinCERT), a special unit of this bank.

“In the period from 13 to 16 August, a distributed DDoS attack was recorded on a number of large financial organizations. The attack was detected by FinCERT at an early stage, there was constant communication with market participants, ”the Central Bank said.

The interlocutors of “Kommersant” clarify that the requests came from the United States, Latin America and Asia. At least 12 large Russian banks, as well as processing companies and Internet providers were attacked.

The Central Bank noted that not a single financial institution suffered, there was no service interruption: “There were isolated slowdowns. In most financial institutions, the attack was repelled by standard information security tools. “

According to Denis Kalemberg, CEO of SafeTech, attacks are becoming more powerful, including because the infrastructure of the “Internet of things” is developing. “Billions of devices appear on the network, from smart dummies to IP cameras and motion sensors, which can be hacked without any difficulty and used to attack the infrastructure of organizations or states,” the expert says.