ATM services were knocked out at top Russian banks on Saturday, July 27, day five of a large-scale Ukrainian cyberattack, a source working in Ukrainian intelligence told Kyiv Post.
The customers of several Russian banks couldn’t withdraw cash, because when attempting to use ATMs, their debit and credit cards were immediately blocked, the source said in written comments.
JOIN US ON TELEGRAM
Follow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official.
“An unprecedented attack by cyber specialists of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine [HUR] on the russian banking sector, which is involved in financing the armed aggression of the russian federation, has been going on for several days in a row,” it said.
The Ukrainian cyberattack began on the morning of July 23. So far, the hackers have:
- Frozen bank payment systems and mobile applications.
- Caused outages in personal offices
- Barred payments for public transport
- Caused interruptions to the Russian mobile and internet providers Beeline, MegaFon, Tele2, and Rostelecom
- Attacked popular online messengers and the largest Russian social networks
- Gained access to major banks’ databases
The source said that the Russian bank Dom.RF was added to the list of hacked banks – a list that includes VTB Bank, Alfa-Bank, Sberbank, Raiffeisen Bank, RSHB Bank, Rosbank, Gazprombank, Tinkoff Bank and iBank.
“This is an opportune moment to fully implement the Kremlin’s long-desired ‘import substitution’ in the form of wooden abacuses, paper savings books, and cave paintings for accounting,” the source had said, the day after the cyberattack had begun.
The attack is “gaining momentum,” the source added in Saturday’s comments.
Jeremy Dirac is the Deputy Managing News Editor for Kyiv Post. He’s been working in journalism for many years and has been focused on Ukrainian issues. Before joining Kyiv Post, he served as the Ukraine Desk Editor for WhoWhatWhy.org and as the Online News Editor for UATV Channel. He graduated from UMass Amherst in 2005 and learned the ropes as a cub reporter for The Recorder newspaper in Greenfield, Massachusetts.