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Only hours after it made the decision to declare Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism, the European Parliament has suffered from a major cyber attack.
The decision by members of the European Parliament (MEPs) comes after it was decided that Russia is committing war crimes in its invasion of Ukraine, with the targeting destruction of civilians and civilian infrastructure, and other violations of international and humanitarian law.
MEPs ruled massively in favour of recognising Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism, with 494 votes in favour, 58 against and 44 abstentions.
Hours later, the European Parliament’s website was taken down due to a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, responsibility of which has been claimed by “pro-Kremlin” hacktivists.
“The European Parliament is under a sophisticated cyber attack. A pro-Kremlin group has claimed responsibility,” said European Parliament President Roberta Metsola.
“This, after we proclaimed Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism. My response: SlavaUkraini (glory to Ukraine).”
European Parliament spokesperson Jaume Duch Guillot also announced that teams were working to fix the issue ASAP.
"The availability of the website is impacted from outside due to high levels of external traffic. This traffic is related to a DDOS attack.
“EP teams are working to resolve this issue as quickly as possible.”
The European Parliament website is now back up.
Russia is a hotpot for hacking groups and is believed to have conducted DDoS and other attacks as part of cyber warfare in the past, such as against Estonia in 2007.
With the European Parliament ruling in overwhelming favour for Russia’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism, it is now asking the EU-27 to establish legislation to legally solidify the decision.
According to the European Parliament website, “As the EU currently cannot officially designate states as sponsors of terrorism, Parliament calls on the EU and its member states to put in place the proper legal framework and consider adding Russia to such a list.
“This would trigger a number of significant restrictive measures against Moscow and have profound restrictive implications for EU relations with Russia.”
Australia has also suffered at the hands of Russian hacking groups of late, with the cyber attack on Medibank believed to have been conducted by Russian-based hacking group REvil.
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