John O’Donnell and Huw James

FRANKFURT/LONDON – The European Central Bank has been preparing its banks for a Russian-sponsored hack attack, according to two persons with knowledge. As the region prepares for financial losses,

Europe’s business and political leaders fear an invasion by Russia or Ukraine, as a result of the standoff between Russia and Ukraine.

In a bid for mediation after Russia’s massed troops in Ukraine, Emmanuel Macron, the French president, travelled from Moscow to Kyiv earlier this week.

The people claimed that the European Central Bank under the former French minister Christine Lagarde is now on high alert in the face of Russian cyberattacks on European banks.

The regulator was previously focused on scams common during pandemics, but the Ukraine crisis has changed its focus to cyber attacks from Russia. One person said that the ECB had questioned banks regarding their defenses.

According to the source, cyber warfare games were being played by banks to assess their resilience to an attack.

The ECB, which has singled out addressing cybersecurity https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ecb-cyber-tests-idINKBN1I31H5 vulnerability as one of its priorities, declined to comment.

The world mirrors its concerns.

In late January, the New York Department of Financial Services sent an alert to financial institutions, notifying them of possible retaliatory cyberattacks if Russia invades Ukraine. This was according to Thomson Reuters (NYSE:)’ Regulatory Intelligence.

HIGH ALERT

Following the deployment of around 100,000 Russian troops close to the former Soviet border, Britain, the United States and the European Union repeatedly warned Putin against attacking Ukraine.

Multiple websites from Ukraine were attacked by hackers earlier this year. This was due to Russia’s presence near Ukraine’s borders.

SBU, Ukraine’s security agency said that it had seen signs of hacker activity linked to the attack.

Russian officials claim that the West is engulfed by Russophobia, and therefore has no right or obligation to instruct Moscow about how to behave after NATO expanded its military alliance to the east since 1991’s fall of Soviet Union.

Also, the Kremlin repeatedly denies that Russia has any involvement in hacking anywhere on the planet and stated it was ready to work with other countries to combat cybercrime.

However, European regulators are always on alert.

The National Cyber Security Centre of Britain warned large organizations to increase their cyber security in the face of increasing tensions regarding Ukraine.

Mark Branson (head of German Supervisor BaFin) spoke on Tuesday at an online conference about how cyberwarfare is interconnected to geopolitics, security, and politics.

The White House https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/white-house-official-discuss-ukraine-cyber-security-with-european-allies-2022-02-01 has also blamed Russia for the devastating ‘NotPetya’ cyber attack in 2017, when a virus crippled parts of Ukraine’s infrastructure, taking down thousands of computers in dozens of countries.

The vulnerability was underscored again last year, when one of the globe’s largest-yet hacking campaigns used a U.S. tech company as a springboard to compromise a raft of U.S. government agencies, an attack the White House blamed on Russia’s foreign intelligence services.

SolarWinds Corp’s software was compromised, and hackers gained access to the systems of thousands more companies. This attack spread throughout Europe, with Denmark’s central banking stating that it had hacked its “financial infrastructure”.

Others believe, however that the Ukraine crisis was exaggerated. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-looking-actions-not-words-putin-zelenskiy-says-2022-02-08 accused Washington and media of fuelling panic.

(Writing by John O’Donnell. Additional reporting by Pete Schroeder, Tom Sims and Stine Jacobsen.