A pro-Russian hacker group known as NoName has taken credit for a series of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks on various government and financial websites in Europe. According to reports, the Cooperative Credit Bank of Rome, BCC Roma, was one of the targets, leaving its website inaccessible. The hackers also targeted the websites of London City Airport, the Italian Federation of Cooperative Credit Banks, and a French travel company called Cars Olivier, among others. While most of the websites were accessible at the time of writing, the portals of the Alnwick City Council in the UK and the website of the electronic identity card of Italy remained inaccessible.
The attacks come as part of a clear pattern of cyber attacks on organizations in Italy over the past year, with the number of incidents increasing since March 2022 following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. NoName has become notorious for launching DDoS attacks on a variety of targets, and they appear to be specifically targeting pro-Ukrainian companies and institutions in neighboring countries like Estonia, Lithuania, Norway, and Poland.
According to a report by digital security and privacy firm Avast, NoName has a 40% success rate with their attacks, and companies with well-protected infrastructure are often able to withstand their attempts. The group uses botnet-as-a-Service and the Redline stealer to steal system and user data, and they infect unpatched systems to gain initial access.
To mitigate against NoName’s DDoS attacks, extended cloud protection tools and specialized software to detect the flood of traffic seconds before it could hit the servers are necessary. In some cases, certain antivirus software can prove successful in detecting threats that can be used by organizations. A good cyber hygiene practice is not to open phishing emails that are specially crafted to look like urgent communications from legitimate government organizations.
The Cyber Express, a news outlet dedicated to cybersecurity, is currently waiting for comments from the organizations targeted by NoName DDoS attacks. It is crucial for organizations to realize the potential impact that cyber threats like this can have and to take necessary precautions to protect themselves from such attacks. As cyber attackers become more sophisticated, it is increasingly important to stay up-to-date with the latest security measures and to work with cybersecurity experts who can provide advice and guidance on how to stay safe in an evolving threat landscape.