Cyprus bank hit with cyberattack after Anonymous pledge

The website for Cyprus’s central bank briefly came under cyberattack, just days after the hacking collective Anonymous vowed a 30-day strike against global banks.

Cryrus’s bank was hit with “some form of a denial of service” attack that “resulted in some delays in user connections,” a spokeswoman told Reuters on Friday.

{mosads}The spokeswoman declined to say when the site was attacked, although several security outlets reported the incident on Thursday.

She said that “generally the website could handle the anticipated number of users for the day.”

It has not been confirmed whether Anonymous carried out the attack.

Anonymous on Tuesday attacked Greece’s central bank in what the group warned was the first salvo in its 30-day strike targeting “the global banking cartel.”

“Olympus will fall,” a computerized voiceover said in a video taking credit for Tuesday’s attack. “Like Icarus, the powers that be have flown to close to the sun, and the time has come to set the wings of their empire ablaze.”

The Greek bank’s website was temporarily disrupted by a distributed denial of service, or DDoS attack, in which hackers force a server to crash by bombarding it with phony traffic.

“The attack lasted for a few minutes and was successfully tackled by the bank’s security systems,” a bank official said. “The only thing that was affected by the denial-of-service attack was our website.”

The group first announced its so-called Op Icarus in late March.

“The arms industries, banking and other financial institutions, government intelligence agencies and countless others …  seeks the preservation and the perpetuation of the powers that be,” a person wearing the group’s trademark Guy Fawkes mask said in a computerized voice.

“This octopus operates through the tentacles of the [International Monetary Fund], the Federal Reserve and the World Bank, masterminded by think tanks such as the Bilderberg Group and the Council on Foreign Relations,” the person continues.

The video calls for attacks on the New York Stock Exchange and Bank of England.