Ukraine's military intelligence agency (HUR) on July 29 carried out a cyberattack against the Russian central bank, a source in the agency told the Kyiv Independent.
This appears to be only the most recent step in an ongoing cyber campaign, which began on July 23 and affected several top Russian banks, including Gazprombank, VTB, Raiffeisen Bank, and Alfa Bank.
The central bank's services have become unavailable or began experiencing significant interruptions at around 11 a.m. local time, the source said.
This corresponds to an article in the Russian business news outlet Frank Media, which said that users began encountering issues with the bank's website around the same time. Several sources confirmed for the outlet that a DDoS attack against the institution was underway.
Russian users also cannot access the online services of Gazprombank and Bank Zenit, a situation further complicated by cyberattacks against Russia's telecommunications providers, the source noted.
"Broker applications, ATMs, Russian social media networks, messengers, Internet providers, and payment systems were also attacked," according to the source.
The central bank's website remains inaccessible from abroad. According to Frank Media, accessing the site from Russia is possible only intermittently.
The bank said on July 27 it would carry out scheduled maintenance of the site, but the work was not expected to last more than one day.
Elsa Court
