A prominent cybersecurity firm has successfully intercepted and prevented a significant distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack aimed at a major U.S. banking institution.
While the bank in question remains undisclosed, Akamai Technologies, the firm that intervened, confirmed it’s one of their most esteemed clients in the banking sector.
DDoS attacks typically crash websites by overloading them with excessive traffic, rendering them inaccessible for a period.
This recent onslaught, which took place on Tuesday, saw traffic spiking to a staggering 633.7 gigabits per second. To put this in perspective, data from the cloud services provider Gcore suggests that DDoS attacks this year could potentially hit highs of 800 gbps.
Akamai mentioned, “The intensity of the attack was significant, yet its duration was under 2 minutes.” The bank’s services remained unaffected by this brief but powerful disruption.
Ordinarily, the majority of the bank’s online visitors hail from the U.S. Intriguingly, during the assault, a global array of traffic sources emerged, with significant influxes from countries including Brazil, China, Bulgaria, and Russia, to name a few.
Notably, U.S. traffic volumes during this period were over twice the norm.
Craig Sparling, Akamai’s senior product manager, in conversation with Recorded Future News, highlighted that without their intervention, the bank would have experienced major disruptions to its primary web functions.
Sparling stated that they don’t pin such attacks on specific cyber groups to avoid giving them undue attention. To date, no hacking collective has acknowledged orchestrating this attempt, likely due to its unsuccessful outcome.
Akamai has witnessed an uptick in DDoS assaults on financial entities since 2021. In the last year alone, around 30% of the DDoS incidents Akamai detected targeted the financial industry.
This recent DDoS strike wasn’t just aimed at any bank; it specifically targeted its main web portal, suggesting a direct intent to obstruct online banking functionalities.
Akamai’s team pointed out, “Targeting core financial entities can have rippling effects on the broader economy, given their foundational role.”