The German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) announced that a DDoS attack has been affecting its website since Friday.
BaFin is Germany's financial regulator and is part of the Federal Ministry of Finance. The authority is responsible for supervising 2,700 banks, 800 financial services and 700 insurance providers. Its powers also include imposing fines in cases of violations. In recent years, it has imposed fines of $10 million and $5 million on Deutsche Bank and Bank of America, respectively.
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The authority says it has taken security measures to shield its operations from hacking and DDoS attacks.
For example, it had taken the public website at “ bafin.de ” offline . However, the agency assures that all other important systems are operating without restrictions.
There are times when some users are able to access the BaFin website but, there are still some issues due to the DDoS attack.
BaFin's public website contains consumer information, regulations, measures and warnings. It also serves as a platform for publishing important documents related to the agency's investigations and findings.
The site also hosts a database of registered companies and public tenders and a platform for whistleblowers to anonymously report any violations. These services were affected by the DDoS attack.
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BaFin says its IT team is working intensively to fully restore public access to the website.
It is unclear who is behind the DDoS attack that affected the German financial regulator. It could be Russian hackers who are attacking because of the country's supportive stance towards Ukraine.
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DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks are a form of cyberattack that aims to prevent access to a website or serviceby overwhelming the target with an excessive number of requests. This can cause significant delays or even a complete shutdown of a site. DDoS attacks can be particularly harmful to organizations such as BaFin, which offer important services and information over the internet.
Source: www.bleepingcomputer.com
