Russian Hackers Target Estonian & Ukrainian Banks and Infrastructure
Today an alleged Russian hacker group called NoName targeted several Estonian institutions, banks, and private firms with DDoS attacks. The attacks resulted in temporary website outages.
- A supposed Russian hacker group called NoName has attacked several Estonian & Ukrainian banks and institutions
- Websites of banks and infrastructure companies were temporarily unavailable today
- Hackers claim to retaliate against Ukraine and Ukraine-supporting countries
- It is unknown if the hackers acted alone or if they are affiliated with the Russian state
A hacker group called NoName has today targeted the websites of several Estonian government institutions and infrastructure-related businesses. The attacks resulted in the affected websites becoming temporarily unavailable.
The first reported attack was against the data collection portal of the Bank of Estonia earlier today, resulting in the bank’s website becoming temporarily inaccessible.
This was followed by an attack against the Estonia-based BLRT Grupp, which is a shipbuilding company headquartered in Tallinn. When writing this article, the company’s website was inaccessible.
In a post on Telegram, the hackers commented that the attacks were carried out as retaliation for Estonia’s support of Ukraine in the context of the Russo-Ukrainian war.
These attacks were followed shortly after by further attacks against EEsti Energia, a public limited energy company based in the country. Further attacks against other institutions and companies are expected.
NoName appears to be a Russia-based hacker group that in the last few days targeted several European countries that have shown support towards Ukraine in the past.
It is not known whether the hacker group acts as a private unaffiliated entity or if it’s an operation or Russian intelligence services.
Part of a series of multiple attacks...
Yesterday the organization announced that it had successfully attacked the websites of Denmark’s Ministry of Finance, Ukraine’s Ministry of Energy, and ZTR, a Ukraine-based Electrical equipment manufacturer.
Before that, the hackers successfully DDoS-ed the Ukrainian Bank Unexbank and Kredobank on March 10 and made fun of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a Telegram post.
On March 9, NoName hackers targeted the Lithuanian Commercial bank Šiaulių. Even the German weapons manufacturer Rheinmetall didn’t escape the hackers when on March 8, they managed to temporarily DDoS its website.
Cyberattacks are a tool often used by state actors in conflict with other countries. Often, the individuals behind these attacks are directly linked to intelligence agencies of the countries on behalf of which the hacks and attacks are carried out.
Currently, it is not known if the hacker group managed to obtain any sensitive data from the affected government agencies or private companies.
It appears that NoName so far has only carried out DDoS attacks against websites. Most of the time, the downtime caused by these attacks was temporary; however, even if time-limited, such attacks can cause significant financial consequences for victims.
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