A notorious Greek hacking group claimed that it was behind the hacker attacks on websites of North Macedonia’s banks including the central bank on February 22.

The hacking group Powerful Greek Army posted pictures on Twitter of the hacked banks on February 22, including Komercijalna Banka, NLB Bank, Stopanska Banka Bitola, ProCredit Bank Skopje, Sparkasse Bank Makedonija and Halk Bank.

Two days before that the group said in a tweet “ALL banks licensed by the National Bank of the Republic of North Macedonia will be taken down soon."

The central bank said on February 23 that access to the websites of the National Bank and local banks was hampered or blocked for a short period of time during the night, as a result of a DDoS attack.

"This was overcome in the shortest possible time after the intervention of the National Bank, commercial banks and web providers. The security, confidentiality and integrity of the data, has not been threatened," it said.

DDoS is an attack on websites, in which a huge number of fictitious customers from different locations pretend to want information from the site, due to which the server is overloaded and needs more time to respond to requests from real users.

"However, in this case, neither the service has been turned off, nor the content of the website has been changed," the central bank said.

This is not the first time the hacking group has targeted institutions in North Macedonia. Earlier this month, the Powerful Greek Army also claimed responsibility for a cyber attack on the education ministry.