EIB hit by cyberattack as Russian hackers vow to bring down financial system

The European Investment Bank (EIB) has been hit by a cyberattack suspected to have been orchestrated by Russian hackers, days after threats to bring down the Western financial system.

An EIB spokesman confirmed it was “currently facing a cyberattack” affecting the availability of some of its websites, Stuff reported on June 20.

The attack comes days after Russian-speaking hackers threatened to launch cyberattacks against Western financial institutions over support for Ukraine.

A group claiming to be from the Killnet gang last week said in a post on Telegram they would “rebuff the madmen according to the formula ‘no money – no weapons – no Kyiv regime’.”

The Killnet gang is best known for knocking websites offline through so-called “distributed denial of service” (DDoS) attacks. DDoS attacks flood a website with so much traffic that it collapses.

A spokesman for the EIB said the bank was addressing the attack and added: “While we have seen groups claiming responsibility for the incident, we will not speculate at this stage.”

The EIB is the European Union’s development bank and is owned by member states. It has over €500 billion (NZ$880b) on its balance sheet.

The Killnet gang is thought to be a group of Russian hackers with potential links to that country’s authorities, according to cybersecurity experts.

Earlier this year the gang claimed credit online for a series of DDoS attacks aimed at Nato and the US Air Force’s Strategic Air Command.

Both organisations suffered from website outages. Such attacks do not normally affect critical infrastructure because websites tend to be insulated from vital operational systems.

At the time of Killnet’s February attacks, Muhammad Yahya Patel, a security engineer from Check Point Software, said:

“This has been their MO for some time, and I am sure we haven’t seen the last of these attempts.

“It would be wise for all businesses, but in particular those with public facing services, to strengthen their defences to ensure they remain operational.”

Most high-profile cybercrime targeting the West comes from Russia as authorities there turn a blind eye to online criminality directed outside its borders.

This unofficial tolerance has resulted in code being added to malicious software that specifically stops it disrupting computers with Russian as the main language in use.