German cooperative banks hit by DDoS hack attack on IT provider

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A German company that operates technology for the nation's cooperative banks said on Friday that a cyber attack disrupting more than 800 financial institutions appeared to be easing.

A so-called distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, in which hackers attempt to flood a network with unusually high volumes of data traffic in order to paralyse it, began on the company on Thursday morning.

It intensified over the night, shutting down or slowing the websites of cooperative banks throughout the country, including banks such as Berliner Volksbank.

The company, Fiducia & GAD IT AG, which provides IT services for the banks' online services, said that as of early Friday afternoon it was still possible that customers would experience isolated disruptions due to its defensive measures.

"Fiducia & GAD is well equipped to deal with these attacks," it said, adding that customer data was safe and that such attacks weren't uncommon.

"Fiducia & GAD's crisis team continues to monitor the systems closely in order to be able to react quickly to any new attacks," it said.