MOSCOW/SYDNEY – Australia and New Zealand financial institutions were among the first in the world to be hit with denial-of-service technology attacks in the third quarter of this year, according to Russian-based security firm Kaspersky Lab.Institutions in some 79 countries in total fell victim in the quarter. But the Aussies and Kiwi firms came in for special early attention.
Switzerland was also an early target as were the Bank of China and the Bank of East Asia, according to Eugene Kaspersky, pictured.
The attacks were made by cyber criminal group, DD4BC, which stands for “DDoS for Bitcoin”. The group especially targeted banks, media groups, and gaming companies, threatening to take down their customer Web sites unless a ransom was paid
“The owner of the targeted resource is asked to pay between 25 and 200 bitcoins (A$13,600 – $109,100), or have their servers disabled,” Kaspersky said. It is unclear how many of the Australian institutions coughed up.