“Lulzsec” cyber threat group claims to be preparing to launch attacks on Indian banks.
A trail of DDoS attacks, data breaches and web page disruption first impacted financial institutions in the UK, Europe, U.S. as well as Israeli organisations.
The timeline of attacks suggests that after “Lulzsec” group announced their intentions, other hacktivist groups compromised major Indian banks in unrelated attacks. Due to India’s perceived political stance in the Israel-Palestine conflict, hacktivist groups have escalated their actions to take ‘revenge’ as well as suffering social media account takeover.
The style of the attacks have been carefully planned to target modern online banking services and expose customers’ data in direct exchanges with their banks. This puts Indian digital wallets and banking applications at risk of a takeover. In June, different cyber groups claimed responsibility for DDOS attacks using free tools and scripts sourced from github. To note, hackers often expose their own attacks and take responsibility before the incidents have even properly come to light, meaning some claims are debunked as a threat only. Hackers have also overtaken the social media accounts of major banks to promote cryptocurrency scams. The safety protections that banks are advised to employ include multi-factor authentication (MFA), strong passwords, regular audits and cloud-based DDoS protection services.
