“Armada Collective” group demanded 50 bitcoins from each of three key banks in Greece. The banks decided not to pay the ransom and were attacked by hackers.

According to “Kathimerini” newspaper, the coordinated hacker attack effectively blocked the banks’ websites for 30 minutes last Thursday. Immediately after the attack, the banks received a message from hackers that urged them to pay 50 bitcoins to extortionists. Meanwhile, The Financial Times reports that hackers demanded 20000 bitcoin (around €7 million) from each bank.

Cybercriminals demanded the banks to send the money before Monday, 30 November, and threatened to commence another attack that day. All three banks decided not to play with blackmailers and asked for police support. Today hackers attempted to flood the banks’ sites with fake requests, but the IT departments managed to keep the services going.

“We had strengthened our defence in the meantime, so no disruptions took place,” an official told to FT.

So far the banks hope to repel further attacks with the help of local internet providers.

The Armada Collective has a notorious reputation as DDoS attack organiser. According to the experts, Armada was the hacker group behind the massive assault on the Internet-infrastructure of financial institutions in Switzerland this May.

Bitcoin blackmail is popular among cybercriminals.This July, Plex, a media streaming service was hacked by an unknown extortionist who demanded a ransom in bitcoins for not exposing users’ private data. This August, cybercriminals used the data stolen from Ashley Madison site to blackmail hundreds of adult site users. 

In Russia, bitcoin extortionists prefer to attack firms and banks in St. Petersburg. First, they attacked one of the leading banks of the city demanding bitcoins for the stolen data. This July “Johny Dilinger” group of hackers blackmailed real estate companies, and caused the evacuation of the trading center and public transport station.

Roman Korizky