iscover
Share this article on:
Powered by
MOMENTUM
MEDIA
The Swedish parliament has announced that it has been targeted by a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack.
Reports from the Swedish parliament said that the attack brought the site down partially on Tuesday (2 May). The website continued to remain slow on Wednesday.
A spokesperson from the Swedish parliament speaking with Reuters said that work to restore the website is currently underway but said it was unable to say when services would return to normal.
A DDoS attack works by overwhelming a server with so much traffic that legitimate traffic comes to a standstill.
DDoS attacks are favoured by threat actors because they are versatile and can achieve multiple goals, such as extortion, acting as a distraction, acting as a precursor to a further attack or sending a message.
Sweden has reported an increased number of cyber attacks of late, attributing it to its application to become a NATO nation, which it did in light of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The attack occurred only a day prior to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s meeting with Nordic leaders in Finland, including Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson.
While the nature and timing of the attack suggest that Russian-backed hacktivists or cyber criminals are behind it, nothing has been confirmed.
Ukraine’s Department of Cyber Information Security said late last month that Russian hacktivism does not exist, and instead, these cyber attacks are connected to Russian security services.
“More than 90 per cent of all cyber attacks targeting Ukraine are either conducted by special services or by state-sponsored groups,” Illia Vitiuk told CyberScoop, while speaking at this week’s RSA Conference in San Francisco. “I do believe that there is no so-called ‘hacktivism’ in Russia at all.”
Be the first to hear the latest developments in the cyber industry.
