The US Treasury Department said it easily prevented an attack by a notorious Russian hacker group
The US Treasury Department was recently targeted by a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack launched by Killnet, a known pro-Russian threat actor.
Reuters claims Killnet targeted the Treasury Department sometime between hacking more than a dozen websites belonging to US airports and banking giant JPMorgan Chase in early October 2022.
However, the DDoS attacks failed to disrupt the operations of airports, failed to disrupt JPMorgan Chase, and in the same way, failed to disrupt the Treasury, it did. be confirm.
Low level activity
In fact, Wally Adeyemo, cybersecurity adviser to the Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, described the attack as a “fairly low-level DDoS operation targeting Treasury critical infrastructure nodes. ” In addition, the Ministry of Finance did not comment on the case.
Killnet is apparently hunting for US-based targets due to its support of Ukraine in its conflict with Russia. The group is very patriotic, as in addition to the US, Killnet has also targeted companies in Romania, Italy, Norway and Lithuania, all countries that have sided with Ukraine since the Russian invasion.
Earlier this month, the group took down a number of websites belonging to different airports across the US, using custom software, and recently listed the affected domains on its Telegram channel.
While the attack did not disrupt flights, it did affect other air services. During the attack, websites belonging to Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL) and Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) were hacked. The attacks also affected Denver International Airport (DIA), Chicago O’Hare International Airport (ORD), Orlando International Airport (MCO), Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX) and several other airports in Kentucky, Mississippi and Hawaii.
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