A massive cyberattack has hit at least five of Russia''s largest banks, Moscow-based internet security giant Kaspersky said Thursday. The country''s largest lender, state-controlled Sberbank, said it had been hacked into on Tuesday but managed to neutralise the attack automatically without disturbing its operations.
Kaspersky said in a statement that the distribution of denial attacks (DDoS) began Tuesday at 1300 GMT and targeted "the websites of at least five well-known financial institutions in the top 10" in Russia. The attacks were still continuing on Thursday. Most lasted around one hour but the longest lasted almost 12 hours, Kaspersky said. DDoS attacks involve flooding websites with more traffic than they can handle, making them difficult to access or taking them offline entirely.