Russian hackers have attacked the website of the European Union’s Parliament and managed to take it offline for several hours.
Anonymous Russia, an arm of the pro-Russian hacktivist group Killnet, reportedly launched a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS (opens in new tab)) attack against the website of the European Parliament.
European Parliament President Roberta Metsola confirmed (opens in new tab) the incident on Twitter, adding that its, “IT experts are pushing back against it & protecting our systems.”
EU Parliament resolution
“The availability of Europarl_EN website is currently impacted from outside due to high levels of external network traffic,” Dauche was cited saying. “This traffic is related to a DDOS attack (Distributed Denial of Service) event. EP teams are working to resolve this issue as quickly as possible.”
The attack appears to be a response to a recently-adopted European Parliament resolution declaring Russia a state sponsor of terrorism, and a state that “uses means of terrorism”.
In a news piece published on the European Parliament website, it was said that the MEPs called on the EU to “further isolate Russia internationally, including when it comes to Russia’s membership of international organizations and bodies such as the United Nations Security Council.
MEPs also want diplomatic ties with Russia to be reduced, EU contacts with official Russian representatives to be kept to the absolute minimum and Russian state-affiliated institutions in the EU spreading propaganda around the world to be closed and banned.”
Killnet has been quite an active group lately, but one that hasn’t exactly built a name for itself. It managed to recently take down the websites of multiple airports across the United States (hasn’t impacted flights), and also targeted JPMorgan Chase, as well as the US Treasury Department.
In all of these incidents, the effects have been minor, and the attacks were described by the FBI as feeble.
Via: BleepingComputer (opens in new tab)
