WASHINGTON—Artificial intelligence-powered bots and increasingly sophisticated hacktivist campaigns drove a record wave of denial-of-service attacks against financial institutions in 2025, with banks bearing the brunt of the activity, according to new research from BankInfoSecurity citing data from Akamai Technologies.
The report found network and transport layer distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks targeting financial services lasted 738% longer last year, while the industry absorbed approximately 2.41 billion attacks—more than any other sector. Akamai said banking institutions accounted for 60% of all web attacks and more than 80% of API-related incidents, underscoring growing concerns around disruptions to payments, account access and third-party financial data connections.
Steve Winterfeld, advisory CISO at Akamai, told BankInfoSecurity that new botnets such as TurboMirai and Aisuru helped fuel the surge, enabling multi-terabit-per-second attacks and increasingly evasive tactics. Advanced bot activity jumped nearly 150% in late 2025, with attackers using AI to mimic legitimate browser behavior, automate reconnaissance and adapt attacks more quickly once inside systems.
The report also pointed to mounting geopolitical cyber risks facing financial institutions. Akamai said malicious traffic in Europe and the Middle East frequently originated from Iran and Russia, while attacks in Asia coincided with military tensions in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea. Since the onset of the conflict involving Iran, the company said attacks against businesses in North America, Europe and parts of Asia-Pacific have risen 245%, while the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority has separately warned that Iranian threat actors may be targeting U.S. banks.
Winterfeld told BankInfoSecurity that cyberattacks increasingly serve as geopolitical pressure tools, particularly where direct economic retaliation is limited. He warned that nation-state-aligned cybercriminals can be used to undermine confidence in financial institutions by disrupting consumer access to money and banking services, creating broader political and economic effects.