Cyber specialists from Ukraine’s military intelligence (HUR) successfully attacked the systems of Gazprombank, one of Russia’s largest banks, a source in the agency told the Kyiv Independent on Dec. 5.
The cyberattack, described as a powerful distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) assault, disrupted Gazprombank's online and mobile banking services. DDoS attacks direct excessive amounts of traffic at a website in order to overload its servers, often causing disruptions to service.
"Hundreds of thousands of Russians will be unable to transfer money and carry out online payments due to Gapzormank applications not working," the source said. Russian state media confirmed on Dec. 4 issues with access to the bank's website.
The attack reportedly rendered Gazprombank’s website inaccessible in France and Germany, with its mobile application also experiencing outages. Gazprombank serves around 3 million individuals and 45,000 businesses and is a critical financial institution in Russia.
This disruption follows sanctions imposed by the U.S. Treasury on Gazprombank on Nov. 21, further targeting the bank amid ongoing efforts to pressure Russia over its war against Ukraine.
Both Russia and Ukraine have widely employed cyber warfare during the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, targeting businesses and government institutions with crippling hacker attacks.
Martin Fornusek
