BaFin, the German equivalent of the FSA, said today that a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack has been affecting its website since last Friday.

The Federal Ministry of Finance of Germany, or BaFin, is in charge of overseeing 2,700 banks, 800 financial institutions, and 700 insurance service providers.

The regulator is renowned for its work in both domestic and foreign law enforcement. It fined the Deutsche Bank and the Bank of America, respectively, $10M and $5M in recent years for numerous infractions.

The German agency announced today that it has taken the necessary defensive and security actions to protect its operations from hackers.

The public website of BaFin provides access to consumer and regulatory information, precautions, and warnings, as well as a place to post significant documents pertaining to the agency's investigation activities and conclusions.

The website also provides a place for job seekers to post resumes, a database of registered businesses and public bids, and a platform for whistleblowers to report infractions anonymously. Since Friday, all of that has remained inaccessible.

BaFin claims that while its IT team is working hard to fully restore public access to the website, it is unable to predict when its pages will be available.

Although the DDoS attack on the German financial authority is unknown, it's probable that pro-Russian hacktivists are behind the nation's supportive policy towards Ukraine, which includes aid in the form of money and military hardware.

Source: Beeping Computer