DDoS attack took down the site of German financial agency BaFin

A massive DDoS attack took down the site of the German financial agency BaFin

Pierluigi Paganini
September 05, 2023

A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack took the site of the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) down.

A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack took the site of the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) down for some days.

It is not clear who is behind the DDoS attack, but the media speculate that it was launched by pro-Russian hacktivists in response to the German financial and military support to Ukraine.

The BaFin website was included in January in a list of targets published by the pro-Russia group Killnet on its Telegram channel.

The German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) is the national financial regulator in Germany, it is a federal agency under the jurisdiction of the Federal Ministry of Finance. The BaFin is responsible for overseeing banks, insurance companies, investment firms, and other financial institutions. BaFin also regulates the securities markets and the financial services industry.

The Authority announced the adoption of adequate security precautions and effective defensive measures immediately after the attack started on Friday, September 1st, 2023.

BaFin stated that all other systems were not impacted and worked without restrictions.

BleepingComputer pointed out that the site under attack hosts a database containing data of registered companies and public tenders, a job vacancies section, and also a platform for whistleblowers used to anonymously report violations.

At the time of this publishing, the site of the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority appears to have been fully restored.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, DDoS)

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AndyC

Andy Curtis is an award-winning security consultant, researcher and public speaker. He has been working in the computer security industry since the early 1990s, having been employed by state and federal government, leading healthcare and banking providers across three continents. He has given talks about computer security for some of the world’s largest companies, worked with law enforcement agencies on investigations into hacking groups, and is a regular voice on TV and radio explaining IT security threats.

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