A massive cyberattack hit at least five of Russia's largest banks, officials reported on November 10.
The country's largest lender, state-controlled Sberbank, said it had been hacked on November 8 but neutralized the attack without disturbing its operations. Sberbank said it has been attacked 68 times this year.
Russian Internet security giant Kaspersky said the distribution of denial attacks targeted the websites of at least five banks, including Alfa Bank, Moscow Bank, Rosbank, and the Moscow Exchange.
The attacks were continuing on November 10, Kaspersky said, with most lasting one hour but the longest lasting 12 hours.
DDoS attacks involve flooding websites with more traffic than they can handle, making them difficult to access or taking them offline entirely.
Kaspersky said as many as 660,000 requests were sent per second using a network of more than 24,000 hijacked devices located in 30 countries. More than half the devices were in the United States, India, Taiwan, and Israel, it said.
Russia's central bank confirmed "attacks on a number of large banks" of "medium" intensity and said they did not disrupt banking services.
It said the attacks were sent by hijacked devices such as CCTVs or digital video recorders plugged into offices and homes worldwide.