In their bid to destabilise the Western financial system, Pro-Russian hacker groups Killnet, Anonymous Sudan and REvil, dubbed the ‘Darknet Parliament’, have taken down the website and disrupted operations of the European Investment Bank (EIB).
The attack is the first major hit on any Western financial enterprise since the hackers allied to launch a concerted attack to cut off the pipeline of Western aid to Ukraine.
Following the attack, the bank's website experienced a total outage, while the website of the European Investment Fund (EIF) - an EIB subsidiary that provides financial resources to SMEs remained online, its appearance was noticeably altered.
Subsequently, the bank announced via Twitter, stating, "We are currently facing a cyber-attack which affects the availability of eib.org and eif.org. We are responding to the incident."
We are currently facing a cyber attack which affects the availability of https://t.co/P3qatt3Uz5 and https://t.co/bGl0aO1Gwl. We are responding to the incident.— European Investment Bank (@EIB) June 19, 2023
Money transfer system target
The hacking trifecta’s primary target is the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) system, which powers most international money and security transfers, the failure of which could potentially cripple the Western financial system.
Other targets in their crosshairs include European and US banks and the US Federal Reserve System.
On its Telegram channel, Killnet wrote: “Hello Europe! How are things with the IBAN banking system? I feel like something is wrong with her.
“Perhaps the transfer system is affected by bad weather.
“And also the weather forecasters say that not only IBAN will be dead, but also SEPA, WISE, SWIFT.”
Spearheaded by Medibank hackers
REvil was responsible for the Medibank data breach last year, where sensitive health records of nearly 10 million Australians were compromised in a cyberattack that shook the nation.
Killnet emerged onto the scene amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine and has since claimed responsibility for several distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on various websites in countries that publicly supported Ukraine.
Killnet made headlines when it temporarily took several US airport websites offline in October and subsequently encouraged hackers to participate in DDoS attacks.
Anonymous Sudan is a group of religiously motivated hackers from Sudan who have been conducting denial-of-service attacks against several Swedish and Danish organisations and critical infrastructure.