Banks|Cyber attacks have also affected other large banks operating in Sweden, but at Nordea it has taken a long time to fix the problems. According to the expert, the motive is usually protest and sowing disorder. No money has been extorted from Nordea.
The summary is made by artificial intelligence and checked by a human.
The problems with Nordea’s online and mobile bank are related to a wider attack on Nordic banks.
Sweden approved a large support package for Ukraine on September 9, after which the problems began.
From time to time, pro-Russian online activist groups have claimed to be the perpetrators of the attacks.
Nordea’s problems have been extensive and long-lasting, unlike other banks.
Nordic the massive problems of online and mobile banking in recent weeks seem to be related to a wider attack, especially on the services of Swedish banks but also of other Nordic countries. Nordea’s head office is in Finland, but the bank is a prominent player in Sweden.
“Sweden approved a large support package for Ukraine on September 9, and it seems there have been problems since then,” research director of information security company Withsecure Mikko Hyppönen says.
Expressen’s according to Swedbanken also had major technical problems over the weekend. Realtid reports that SEB has had repeated problems in recent weeks and again over the weekend.
Aftonbladet on the other hand, told about Handelsbanken’s problems over the weekend. Problems with banking services have also been reported in previous weeks.
Cyber security according to experts, there have typically been more attacks just after the support package decisions. They also accelerated, for example, when Finland officially became a member of NATO on April 4, 2023.
There is no definite information about the perpetrators, but from time to time pro-Russian online activist groups have been reported as the perpetrators of the attacks.
According to Hyppönen, the motive for denial of service attacks is usually protest or money. With banks, it’s hardly about money. Nordea also told HS that it has not been extorted in connection with the cases.
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“It’s a constant game of cat and mouse.”
With attacks according to Hyppönen, especially online stores, which quickly experience large financial losses, are being financially extorted.
What separates Nordea from other banks is that the problems have been extensive and it has taken a long time to fix them.
The pattern has gone so that first there has been a denial of service attack and then the updates made to combat the threat have messed up Nordea’s services possibly even worse.
Isn’t it At Nordea, to know or what is it all about?
Information security expert of Traficom’s Cybersecurity Center Samuli Könenen according to which it is difficult to assess the competence of an individual bank.
“Considering how many attacks are carried out, there are surprisingly few problems,” he says.
Denial of service attacks do not cause permanent damage. The opposite could happen if cybercriminals were able to penetrate the company’s systems. This is not known to have happened in Finnish banks.
In a denial-of-service attack, the aim is only to bring down online services by targeting them with a large amount of traffic.
Könen according to this, attacks are protected by planning the services so that they can receive a lot of traffic. Banks operating only in Finland can also temporarily close access to their online services from outside the borders of Finland.
“However, the most important method is to try to filter the incoming traffic from the real users and the traffic used for the attack,” he says.
According to Mikko Hyppönen, banks’ frequent problems can be explained by the fact that traffic filtering is more difficult in banks, because their systems are still in their own data centers for security reasons.
“There are very effective filtering services available to users of cloud services, such as Cloudflare. Cloud services also scale automatically if traffic increases. It’s harder to knock them down,” he says.
Last In this case, as in other matters, it’s about how much you want to invest in combating online attacks. Combat is an expensive arms race.
The attackers are also doing product development all the time. In the early days, attacks just targeted a lot of traffic to a particular site. Today, we are looking for important nodes in the systems, which can be affected to cause as much destruction as possible. The attack is moved from one place to another when one point is blocked.
“It’s a constant game of cat and mouse.”
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“The attackers’ motive may also be to sow general mistrust and insecurity.”
Nordea has told that the problems of the last few days have been related to system updates. At the weekend, some customers’ account balances showed zero or the account was not visible at all. It has taken some time to restore the data. On Tuesday, there were problems with identification, card payments and cash withdrawals, among other things.
The simultaneous difficulties of Swedish banks means that the updates were specifically about combating a denial of service attack. For some reason, it would seem that it will take Nordea longer than other banks to correct the situation.
Könen according to the banks’ systems are so complex that connections between different parts can be broken in quickly prepared updates. Then, for example, the mobile bank cannot access the account information.
The account information is not permanently lost, but the customer may be very worried about his money.
“The motive of the attackers may also be to sow general mistrust and insecurity. In that respect, the more the problems they cause are written about, the more the attackers reach their goal.”
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