DDoS attacks on Danish banks

The Danish central bank and a number of Danish private banks have fallen victim to DDoS attacks. The websites were temporarily unavailable, making it impossible to access online banking functions, for example.

Eight banks affected

In addition to the Danish central bank, seven private banks were affected by the attacks. They took place on Tuesday. The attacks were so-called DDoS attacks, in which so many automated requests are made to a website that it becomes overloaded. As a result, real calls can no longer be processed: This results in significant functional restrictions. For the bank’s customers, for example, this meant that online banking services could not be used.

A spokesman for the Danish central bank played down the incident to the Reuters news agency: The central bank’s site was already accessible as usual in the afternoon, other systems of the bank were not affected and daily business was not impaired. A spokesman for Bankdata, the IT banking services provider, also stated that only brief disruptions had occurred.

The affected Sydbank, one of Denmark’s largest banks, had confirmed the attack on its website on Facebook and reported around 3 p.m. that the site was again accessible and usable as usual. A spokesman for Jyske Bank, also one of the country’s largest banks, admitted that there had been temporary disruptions.

Attacks are being tracked

DDoS attacks require essentially no technical knowledge and can be easily initiated by anyone with a computer. Awareness of the problems of such attacks has increased enormously in recent years – and so has law enforcement. In the meantime, a professional infrastructure has emerged, for example, for renting servers for DDoS attacks. In the past, there had been investigations directed against operators of such infrastructures as well as arrests. In the recent past, DDoS attacks were carried out against the IHK and Microsoft. One incident related to a Minecraft tournament was particularly curious. An attack, which was probably directed against participants from Andorra, paralyzed the Internet throughout the country.