"100+ Financial Services Firms Targeted in Ransom DDoS Attacks in 2020"

The Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center (FS-ISAC) has revealed that more than 100 financial services firms across Europe, North America, Latin America, and Asia were targeted in a flood of Ransom Distributed Denial-of-Service (RDDoS) attacks launched by the same actor in 2020. Those targeted by these attacks include banks, exchanges, payment processing companies, card issuers, payroll companies, money transfer services, and insurance firms. In each attack, the malicious actor delivered extortion notes to the target, threatening to disrupt their website and services by launching a DDoS attack if they do not pay the demanded ransom. According to a statement recently released by the FS-ISAC, the impact of this threat was mitigated mainly through information-sharing by its members via the FS-ISAC Threat Intelligence Exchange. None of the FS-ISAC members that received the extortion note reported paying the ransom. Further analysis of the RDDoS attacks' victims showed that the attackers primarily focused on retail banking or consumer banking as these organizations were hit by more than 40 percent of the attacks. The FS-ISAC said that some companies increased their cybersecurity spending in response to the attacks. There was more than an increase in the number of RDDoS attacks last year. Security vendors have reported an increase in the overall number, size, and duration of DDoS attacks, as well as the combination of multiple attack vectors by such attacks. This article continues to discuss the targeting of over 100 financial companies in RDDoS attacks in 2020 and the overall advancement of DDoS attacks. 

Dark Reading reports "100+ Financial Services Firms Targeted in Ransom DDoS Attacks in 2020"