Major Russian banks attacked by powerful IoT devices-focused botnet

Five major Russian banks were targeted late last week by a botnet comprised of 24,000 computer and IoT devices. The attacks came from devices in 30 countries, including the United States, India, and Taiwan.

The attacks came in the form of distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS), which sends millions of requests to servers, taking them offline. From there, hackers may be able to compromise systems and steal information, but the five banks have denied any customer information has been stolen.

Sberbank, Alfa Bank, the Bank of Moscow, Rosbank, and the Moscow Exchange were all targeted in the attack, and websites were forced offline for several hours. The attack started on November 8, and it took two days for systems to normalize.