Patria Bank

Patria Bank is a financial institution headquartered in Romania. As a bank, it provides banking services to individuals and businesses operating within the country. Its core activities include accepting deposits, extending credit, and facilitating payment transactions. The institution serves the Romanian market as part of the national banking sector. These functions are typical of banks that operate under the regulatory framework of the National Bank of Romania.

The prompt does not disclose any quantitative metrics regarding the bank's size, such as the number of branches, employees, or customers. Consequently, we cannot describe its scale or market footprint with concrete figures. Without explicit data, any statement about its reach relative to other institutions would be speculative. Therefore, this section refrains from providing size‑related information. The absence of such details means the profile relies solely on qualitative facts that are explicitly given.

On August 13, 2018, Patria Bank was targeted in a spear‑phishing campaign conducted by the financially motivated Cobalt Group, also known as TEMP.Metastrike. The attackers sent deceptive emails that pretended to come from trusted financial partners to lure recipients into opening malicious attachments. These attachments were weaponized Word documents containing obfuscated VBA scripts and binaries that were disguised as image files. Once opened, the documents deployed JavaScript backdoors and the CobInt/COOLPANTS reconnaissance tools. The malware established persistence on infected systems by creating registry keys and leveraged regsvr32.exe for execution. Communication with the attackers’ command‑and‑control infrastructure, such as the domain rietumu[.]me, used RC4‑encrypted traffic to evade detection. The campaign was part of a broader effort by the Cobalt Group, which has historically been linked to SWIFT system breaches and ATM malware operations, aiming to compromise financial networks for monetary gain.

Details concerning Patria Bank's ownership structure, parent company, or any subsidiary relationships are not present in the supplied information. As a result, no assertions can be made about whether the bank is independently owned, part of a larger financial group, or has affiliated entities. The lack of explicit ownership data prevents any description of its corporate hierarchy. Consequently, the profile concludes with the confirmed facts that Patria Bank is a Romanian‑based bank that experienced a documented cyber‑attack in 2018.