Russian Banks Suffer Wave of DDoS Attacks

Over the past several weeks, we have seen a spark in Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks across the globe. Kaspersky Lab, an international cybersecurity provider based in Moscow, has confirmed that 5 of Russia’s largest banks, including Sberbank, have been experiencing persistent DDoS attacks over the past several days. At the peak of the DDoS attacks, Kaspersky Lab reached over 660,000 requests per second. Experts believe that the hackers have carried out these attacks through the botnet of a hacked Internet of Things device, similar to the recent DDoS attack on Dynamic Network Services Inc. (Dyn) in the United States. While the origins of the attacks are unknown, some speculate that they have originated from anger about Russian involvement in the U.S. elections. In response to the attacks, the Online Trust Alliance (OTA) has produced a framework for a kite mark standard in securing IoT devices. While this DDoS attack on Russian banks was just one of 68 in total this year, experts say it is one of the largest they have ever seen.