OREANDA-NEWS. Hackers from Russian-speaking groups almost stopped attacking Russian banks and switched to foreign credit organizations, according to the annual report of Hi-Tech Crime Trends 2019 (for the second half of 2018 - the first half of 2019) of the Group-IB company, which specializes in cybersecurity issues. “Until 2018, Russian-speaking groups more often attacked banks in Russia and the CIS, but over the past year this trend has changed dramatically. Now, attackers focus mainly on foreign banks and organizations”, the authors of the report note.

As a representative of Group-IB explained to the Russian media, new groups "often start working in their region: this was the case with Cobalt, with Silence in Russia, this is happening now with SilentCards in Africa". The “home” regions for them are a testing ground: having worked out the techniques, they move on. For example, the same “Russian-speaking troika” focused on goals in Asia, Africa, Europe and America”, he added.

A representative of Kaspersky Lab confirms this trend. “Attackers switched to countries that are less protected (Eastern Europe, the CIS, Asia, and so on)”, he notes.