Russian state-owned bank VTB hit by largest cyberattack in its history

(Reuters) — Russia’s No. 2 bank VTB was hit by the largest cyberattack in its history, it said Tuesday, warning of temporary difficulties in accessing its mobile app and website but assuring customers that their data remained safe.

State-owned VTB said it was repelling the distributed denial of service attack, in which hackers attempt to flood a network with unusually high volumes of data traffic in order to paralyze it.

“The bank's technological infrastructure is under an unprecedented cyberattack from abroad,” VTB said in a statement. “The largest not only this year, but in the whole time the bank has operated.”

Russian government entities and state-owned companies have been targeted over events in Ukraine, with the websites of the Kremlin, flagship carrier Aeroflot and major lender Sberbank among those that have seen outages or temporary access issues.

Hackers also delayed the start of President Vladimir Putin's speech at Russia's flagship economic forum earlier this year.

Pro-Russian hackers, meanwhile, have claimed responsibility or been blamed for attacks on websites and infrastructure in Lithuania, Norway and the United States this year.