The European Central Bank (ECB) is preparing banks for a possible Russian-sponsored cyberattack as tensions with Ukraine mount, two people with knowledge of the matter said, as the region braces for the financial fallout of any conflict.
The standoff between Russia and Ukraine has rattled Europe’s political and business leaders, who fear an invasion that would inflict damage on the entire region.
Earlier this week, French President Emmanuel Macron shuttled from Moscow to Kiev in a bid to act as a mediator after Russia massed troops near Ukraine.
Now the ECB, led by former French finance minister Christine Lagarde and which has oversight of Europe’s biggest lenders, is on alert for the threat of cyberattacks on banks launched from Russia, the people said.
While the regulator had been focused on ordinary scams that boomed during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Ukraine crisis has diverted its attention to cyberattacks launched from Russia, one of the people said, adding that the ECB has questioned banks about their defenses.
Banks were conducting cyberwar games to test their ability to fend off an attack, the person said.
The ECB, which has singled out addressing cybersecurity vulnerability as one of its priorities, declined to comment.
Its concerns are mirrored around the world.
The New York Department of Financial Services issued an alert to financial institutions late last month, warning of retaliatory cyberattacks should Russia invade Ukraine and trigger US sanctions, according to Thomson Reuters’ Regulatory Intelligence.
The US, the EU and Britain have repeatedly warned Russian President Vladmiri Putin against attacking Ukraine after Moscow deployed about 100,000 troops near the border with its former Soviet neighbor.
Earlier this year, multiple Ukrainian Web sites were hit by a cyberstrike that left a warning to “be afraid and expect the worst.”
Ukraine’s state security service, SBU, said it saw signs the attack was linked to hacker groups associated with Russian intelligence services.
Russian officials say the West is gripped by Russophobia and has no right to lecture Moscow on how to act after it expanded the NATO military alliance eastward since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union.
The Kremlin has also repeatedly denied that the Russian state has anything to do with hacking around the world, and said it is ready to cooperate with the US and others to crack down on cybercrime.
Nonetheless, regulators in Europe are on high alert.
Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre warned large organizations to bolster their cybersecurity resilience amid the deepening tensions over Ukraine.
On Tuesday, German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority President Mark Branson told an online conference that cyberwarfare was interconnected with geopolitics and security.
The White House has blamed Russia for the devastating “NotPetya” cyberattack in 2017, when a virus crippled parts of Ukraine’s infrastructure, taking down thousands of computers in dozens of countries.
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