Botnet of 24,000 Devices Targets Russian Banks

Five Russian banks were targeted by hackers for multiple days last week.

Hackers targeted multiple banks with distributed denial-of-service attacks, which flood systems with traffic. The attacks started Nov. 8 and came in waves, lasting from one to 12 hours, according to a BBC report. Statements from Sberbank and Alfabank said bank operations were not interrupted.

The botnet included at least 24,000 devices in 30 countries, though about half of the devices were located in the U.S., said a RT.com article. The attacks lasted for two days.

Last month, a massive DDoS attack attributed to the Mirai family of malware crippled Domain Name System provider Dyn, slowing internet service down for large portions of the U.S. Security firm Kaspersky Labs said the Russian bank attacks do not appear to be related to Mirai, according to The Hacker News, though they did employ smart devices.