German IT company that serves banks experiences DDoS hack attack

The company, Fiducia & GAD IT AG, said the attacks began on Thursday morning, shutting down or hindering the websites of some cooperative banks in parts of the country.

In such attacks, hackers attempt to flood a network with unusually high volumes of data traffic in order to paralyse it. (Pixabay)

A German company that operates technology for the nation's cooperative banks said on Friday that it was experiencing continued distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks throughout the night.

In such attacks, hackers attempt to flood a network with unusually high volumes of data traffic in order to paralyse it.

The company, Fiducia & GAD IT AG, said the attacks began on Thursday morning, shutting down or hindering the websites of some cooperative banks in parts of the country.

The issue stabilized by the afternoon, but picked up again in the evening with "further major attacks into the night".

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

The company noted that such attacks weren't uncommon in the industry.

A spokeswoman for Fiducia & GAD IT AG couldn't immediately say how many banks were affected. The banking blog Finanz-Szene earlier reported about the attack.