Hackers Target Three Greek Banks, Demand Ransom In Bitcoin

According to latest reports, three Greek banks have been the latest target for cyber-attack and the hackers have demanded ransom in bitcoin, banking sources told Reuters on Monday.

The hackers, going by the name Armada Collective, were able to block internet activity of the three banks last week but couldn’t breach the banks’ security or get access to accounts or confidential client information.

"All they achieved was to block the web banking for a few hours. Nothing else," one banker told Reuters.

The banks had refused to pay the ransom and alerted the security services and the Greek central bank, which are now investigating the matter.

“No bank responded to this extortion, so the same hackers tried again at the weekend and today,” a police official said on Monday. “But we had strengthened our defence in the meantime, so no disruptions took place.”

Paul Vlissidis, technical director at cyber security group NCC, said that the Armada Collective, attempts to extort money from businesses that are vulnerable to attack, FT reported.

“In effect, they say: ‘Give us bitcoin or we will take you off the internet’,” he explained. “They claim to be able to do significant amounts of damage.” He added that the level of ransom demanded by the group — often the equivalent of only a few thousand pounds — was “targeted at a level where there’s a temptation just to pay it and make it go away”.

Crypto Coins News reported that the Bank of Greece along with a special unit comprising of experts from Greece’s National Intelligence Service (EYP) and the Financial Crimes Squad (SDOE) are on guard and investigating the ransom demands and hacking threat of the Armada Collective.

In mid-November, a hacking group using the same name was reported to have carried out Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks on a number of private emails, Reuters reported.

A DDoS attack is an attempt to make an online service unavailable by overwhelming it with traffic from multiple sources. They target a wide variety of important resources, from banks to news websites, and present a major challenge to making sure people can publish and access important information.