The fraudsters managed to access the accounts by forging a client`s credentials. The financial institution has revealed that the criminals intended to take RUB 5 billion (USD 78.5 million), but failed. As a result, special recommendations were sent out to banks in Russia by the central bank on how they should prepare for additional attacks.
According to The Star, state-controlled Russian bank VTB said that its websites had been hit by a cyberattack but insisted its systems were still working “as normal” and “the bank’s clients are not experiencing any difficulties.”
On December 2, Russia said it had uncovered plans by foreign intelligence services to carry out massive cyberattacks in December targeting the country’s financial system, the online publication continued. The FSB security service said in a statement that it had received information on “plans by foreign secret services to carry out large-scale cyberattacks from December 5”.
Still, the FSB did not say which countries` secret services were involved in the latest plot against Russian banks but alleged the attacks would use servers and “command centres” located in the Netherlands belonging to Ukrainian hosting company BlazingFast.
In November 2016, five Russian banks reported Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.
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