Saint Petersburg experienced a major attack of telephone terrorists who informed the authorities about bombs planted at 5 rail stations, two ports, and the central bus station.

The extortionists demanded from the city authorities 480 bitcoins and threatened to plant bombs at airports and metro stations. On 4th of September, the police had to evacuate people from all city's major transport stations.

The group of hackers behind the attacks call themselves “Dillinger team” and are reportedly based in Kharkov, Ukraine. The group blackmailed trade centers in Saint Petersburg into paying ransom in bitcoin currency several times during the summer. On 25th of August security officers had to evacuate people from 6 trade centers and on 26th August the number grew to 9 locations. The city ran out of mine clearing specialists and cynologists and the traffic was paralysed.

For the first time the team reached out to the city authorities, not the private firms, on 28th of August. They threatened to repeat attacks and specified the deadline of the 1st September by which they wanted 480 bitcoins to be transferred to their accounts. This was the condition to prevent the similar attacks on banks and public transport.

This July “Bank Saint-Petersburg” decided not to pay 1,636 bitcoins to the hackers, who stole confidential information from the bank database. Police is investigating the case. According to the Fontanka newspaper, the hackers stole details of up to 300,000 bank accounts and threatened to publish the data on a special website.

Aliona Chapel