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Oleh Horokhovskyi, chief executive officer of Monobank, at the mobile-only bank service provider's office in Kyiv, Ukraine, on July 4, 2023. (Pete Kiehart/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
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Hackers targeted Ukraine's largest mobile-only bank, Monobank, with a massive denial of service (DDoS) attack on Aug. 16, according to Oleh Horokhovskyi, the company's co-founder and CEO.

DDoS attacks direct excessive amounts of traffic at a website in order to overload its servers, often causing disruptions to service.

Monobank received around one billion service requests in three hours, Horokhovskyi reported via Telegram on Aug. 16.

"We are fighting it off while drinking coffee and donuts ... We are keeping the situation under control," he said.

Monobank has previously been targeted in similar cyberattacks. A DDoS attack in January sent over 580 million service requests to the bank's website.  

Horokhovskyi did not identify a culprit, though previous threats have been linked to Russian hackers. Russia has launched thousands of cyberattacks against Ukrainian organizations since the start of its full-scale invasion.

Ukrainian hackers in turn have fought back against Russian cyberwarfare by launching attacks of their own. Ukraine's IT Army, a volunteer hacker group, claimed responsibility for a massive DDoS attack against Russian banks and Russia's Mir payment system in June.

Opinion: Ukraine’s volunteer hacker army is pioneering a new era of cyber warfare
Over two years have passed since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and the volunteer IT Army of Ukraine is more effective than ever. On June 20, 2024, the hacker group launched what they claimed to be the “largest DDoS attack in history” against Russia’s banking system, crippling numerous ban…

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5:52 PM

Reuters: Chinese military officers have been present behind Russian lines with Beijing’s approval.

More than 100 Chinese nationals fighting alongside Russian forces in Ukraine are acting as mercenaries and do not appear to have direct ties to Beijing, according to two U.S. officials cited by Reuters. However, a former intelligence official told Reuters that Chinese military officers were present behind Russian lines, with Beijing’s approval, to observe and draw tactical lessons from the war.
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