BancoEstado

History

2020: Attack of a virus racketeer

At the beginning of September, 2020 BancoEstado, one of three largest banks of Chile, was forced to close all departments after the attack of a virus racketeer. Details of the attack are not disclosed, but the source close to investigation reported that the internal network of bank was infected with the REvil (Sodinokibi) virus.

It is supposed that the harmful document Office received and opened by the employee of the bank became the cause of the incident. The file set a backdoor in network of bank, and at night hackers used it for access to network and installation of a virus racketeer. Employees of the bank detected the attack next day when could not get access to the work files.

The BancoEstado bank closed all the departments after the attack of a virus racketeer

BancoEstado announced an incident in the Chilean police, and on the same day the government of Chile sent national warning of the campaign of hackers racketeers aimed at the private sector. Though initially the bank hoped to recover from the attack without notice of clients, the damage was too significant. Judging by data of a source, the virus racketeer ciphered the vast majority of internal servers and workstations of employees. However the bank segmented the internal network, and it limited infection. BancoEstado hurried to assure clients that the website of bank, the bank portal, mobile applications and ATMs remained are not mentioned by a virus.

Gang of racketeers of REvil - one of groups of hackers who merge the cracked data in the Darknet if the victim does not pay the redemption. Meanwhile BancoEstado was not on the date leak website, i.e. the bank or paid the required redemption, or still conducts negotiations with hackers.

It is the second case of cyber attack to the Chilean bank. In June, 2018 North Korean hackers unrolled the malware for cleaning of disks in Banco de Chile network, trying to hide network hacking. A year later they also cracked Redbanc - the company which connects infrastructure of ATMs of all Chilean banks.^[1]

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