ZURICH: Russian hackers have attacked the websites of several regional banks and local councils in Switzerland, which is currently hosting the World Economic Forum, Swiss news agency ATS reported on Tuesday.
It said that the National Cybersecurity Centre (NCSC) had expected there to be cyberattacks during the gathering of political and economic leaders in Davos this week.
The websites of the Zurich and Vaud cantonal banks have been targeted, along with those of the local authorities in Adligenswil, Kriens and Ebikon, near Lucerne, ATS said.
The websites were still inoperable as of 11:00 am (1000 GMT), AFP observed.
ATS said that the incidents were the work of a group of Russian hackers called NoName and had been interpreted by the NCSC as an online demonstration intended to attract attention.
The hackers carried out a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, which involves overloading websites and applications with targeted requests so that they become inaccessible.
However, this type of cyberattack does not cause a data breach, the NCSC said.