German finance firm BaFin faced a DDoS attack from threat actors

BaFin, a German financial supervisory agency, disclosed that a distributed denial-of-service campaign had compromised its websites since last week. The affected entity is one of Germany’s monetary regulatory authorities.

The agency is part of the Federal Ministry of Finance, which manages and supervises about 2,700 banks, 800 financial institutions, and 700 insurance providers.

This compromised regulatory board is known for its law enforcement role in the German government and its international presence. In recent years, the entity has imposed millions of fines on several financial institutions for various violations.

 

BaFin stated that it executed necessary actions to address the current DDoS attacks affecting its operations.

 

BaFin’s agency has deployed a security team and taken all appropriate security precautions and defensive measures to safeguard its unaffected operations from the attackers.

One method they use is temporarily taking down its public website “bafin[.]de.” In addition, the agency assured everyone that the unaffected systems will remain operational and all systems crucial for its mitigation missions will work without restrictions.

However, the agency’s website will remain unavailable even though some users can access it intermittently.

This public website could host consumer and regulation information, warnings, and measures. It could allow users to publish essential archives related to the agency’s investigation process and observations.

The site also hosts a database that contains registered companies and public tenders, a platform for whistleblowers who report violations anonymously, and job vacancies space. Unfortunately, the database became inaccessible after the discovery of the DDoS campaign.

This German-based financial authority explained that its IT team works diligently and quickly to fully restore public access to the website. They currently do not have a clear timeline for reestablishing their pages.

The investigation has yet to pinpoint the threat actors compromising the German financial authority. However, some researchers claimed that the DDoS campaign might have come from pro-Russian hacktivist groups since they are responsible for numerous attacks against entities that support Ukraine. Therefore, it is possible that Germany’s relationship and role in the ongoing war could have caused the targeted DDoS attacks.