All news

Cyberattacks do not disrupt operation of Russian banks — regulator

Earlier on Tuesday, the Petya virus attacked a number of Russian and Ukrainian companies' websites

MOSCOW, June 27. /TASS/. The Bank of Russia reported detection of cyberattacks aimed at Russian lending institutions, an official with the press service of the regulator told journalists.

"According to the Bank of Russia, as a result of attacks no malfunction in operation of bank systems and no disruptions in provision of services to customers were recorded," the official said.

At present, FinCERT, the regulator’s center for monitoring and responding to computer attacks, together with banks is working on elimination of consequences of the detected attacks, the regulator's representative added.

IT-systems of Sberbank and Alfa-Bank are functioning in a regular mode, the banks’ press services told TASS earlier.

Earlier on Tuesday, Group-IB, the company which deals with prevention and investigation of cybercrime, reported that Rosneft, Bashneft, Mars, Nivea and Mondelez International (producer of Alpen Gold chocolate) are among the companies that had been attacked by the Petya virus. The Petya virus blocks computers and requires a ransom of $300 in bitcoins.

The experts of Group-IB also found that recently this virus was used by the Cobalt group to hide the traces of a targeted attack on financial institutions.

On Tuesday, the computer virus also attacked the websites and computer systems of numerous Ukrainian companies, banks, state agencies and other institutions, statements published on social networks say. In particular, government computers, Ukrainian operators (Kyivstar, LifeCell, Ukrtelecom) and Privatbank were attacked.

Last time a major attack on the computer systems of Russian companies and state institutions was registered on May 12. The attack was part of a large-scale operation of unknown hackers who, using the WannaCry virus, attacked computers with the Windows operating system in 74 countries. Throughout the world, 45,000 cyberattacks with the use of a cryptographic virus were committed, and the largest number of attempts at infection was recorded in Russia. The attackers wanted to get $600 in Bitcoin crypto currency from each victim for decoding of the computer data.