Banks: Russia Steps up Cyberwar Against Financial System

Russia has begun a cyberwar against the U.S. in retaliation to recent sanctions targeting the banking system and other major industries.

The New York Post reported Tuesday (March 1) that the President Joe Biden administration has been working with bank executives over the last few months about preparing for these attacks.

Big banks such as J.P. Morgan, Citigroup, Bank of America and Goldman Sachs are under threat constantly from cybercriminals, according to the report, with the attacks coming typically from Iran and China in addition to Russia.

Bank executives said in the report that while they’ve spent billions of dollars each year to fend off these attacks, the recent wave of is different. There are subtle yet intensified attacks on banks’ technological infrastructure that commenced once the U.S. announced its sanctions in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last week.

Those sanctions include freezing international assets held by the Russian central bank, as well as severing some Russian banks from SWIFT, the interbank messaging system that underpins a good deal of worldwide financial transactions.

Earlier this week, the U.S. government said crypto exchanges shouldn’t facilitate transactions for people or entities that have been recently added to a sanctions list, including some Russian oligarchs.

Read more: US Treasury Adds Crypto Rules to Russia Sanctions

Bank executives declined to go on the record with the Post out of fear that public comments would embolden the cybercriminals, referring calls to the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center, a cybersecurity banking industry consortium.

“We are in close communication with our member firms and relevant authorities around the world to monitor cyber activity against the financial sector,” a center spokesman said, per the report. “At this time, the sector is not seeing any significant threats attributable to any geographic origin. We continue to actively assess the situation through enhanced monitoring and cross-border threat intelligence sharing across the financial services sector.”

Last week saw the hacking group Anonymous declare its own cyberwar against Russia, targeting the websites of the Kremlin, the Duma, the Ministry of Defense, and state-owned media outlet Russia Today.

See more: Hacking Group Anonymous Wages ‘Cyber War’ Against Russia