Pro-Russian Hackers Hit Ukrainian Banks

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NoName is a Russian-linked hacktivist group that has been targeting Ukraine’s financial sector in its latest campaign.

The gang made a post on their encrypted Telegram channel stating: “We will start today’s journey with an attack on the financial sector of Ukraine.” This was June 27th, and since then nearly a dozen major Ukrainian banks have been hit daily by the gang’s signature DDoS attack method, including four of the nation’s largest commercial banks.

According to Cybernews, apart from claiming to put several of the bank websites completely offline, the gang has also gone specifically after authorization services, login portals, customer service systems, and loan processing services.

A possible catalyst for this hacking campaign may be a recent announcement that was made by Ukrainian politicians, who claimed they’d become the “first country in the world to completely abolish cash. “

A post made by the group stated: “According to the Deputy Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Rostyslav Shurma, the country wants to ban cash payments, which will make it possible to overcome at least 95% of corruption. But we, unlike Shurma, are absolutely sure that Ukraine will never give up the money of its Western masters.”

NoName first appeared on the hacking scene when Russia invaded Ukraine and has mainly focused on NATO member nations allied with Ukraine. They recently targeted critical infrastructure in Poland, Denmark, and Lithuania, the French parliament, and made nearly a dozen attacks on Switzerland’s financial and aviation sectors this month. Some of the largest European ports in Italy, Germany, Spain and Bulgaria were hacked by NoName on June 16.

NoName was discovered in January to be advertising cryptocurrency payouts to volunteer hackers, in exchange for joining in on the group’s DDoS attacks (overloading a website with traffic requests, causing it to crash).