Russia’s telecom operator on Friday said that it had blocked a series of cyber attacks on the country’s leading banks this week, the latest to target the country’s financial sector.

Rostelecom said in a statement that it “successfully thwarted DDoS (distributed denial of service) on the five biggest banks and financial organizations in Russia” on December 5.

“The most sustained attack lasted more than two hours,” it said.

Russia’s FSB security service last week said it had uncovered plans by foreign intelligence services to carry out massive cyber attacks targeting the country’s financial system from December 5.

State-controlled Russian bank VTB said Monday that its websites had been hit by a cyber attack but insisted its systems were still working “as normal”.

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 centers” located in the Netherlands belonging to Ukrainian hosting company, BlazingFast.

Source: AFP