The European Parliament was down for several hours due to a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack by a pro-Russian hacktivist group (a member of Killnet). attacks occur when a malicious actor floods a website with traffic, causing the website to crash or slow down significantly.
The President of the European Parliament confirmed the incident, saying that “Parliament’s IT specialists are dealing with it and protecting our systems.”
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Jaume Duch , Director-General for Communication and Spokesperson of the European Parliament, explained that the website's collapse was due to an ongoing DDoS attack
“The availability of the Europarl_EN website is currently affected due to high levels of traffic,” Duche said.
“This traffic is related to a DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack. EP teams are working to resolve this issue as soon as possible“.
The attack came after the European Parliament recognized Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism and MEPs called for further isolation of Russia.
“The parliament calls on the European Union to further isolate Russia internationally, including when it comes to Russia’s participation in international organizations and bodies such as the United Nations Security Council,” it said in a press release.
See also: Killnet group claims to have DDoSed FBI website
“MEPs also want to downgrade diplomatic relations with Russia, limit EU contacts with official Russian representatives to a minimum, and close and ban Russian state institutions in the EU that spread propaganda around the world.“.
Pro-Kremlin groups have been targeting European and American websites since Russia invaded Ukraine. Most recently, Killnet carried out attacks targeting American airport.
A week ago, they tried to take down multiple government websites in Colorado, Kentucky, and Mississippi – with little success. However, they managed to take down a few sites for a limited time.
See also: FBI and CISA: What you need to know about DDoS attacks
Killnet also claimed to have brought down CISA's Protected Critical Information Management System website after its attacks on the US Treasury Department in early October were thwarted before they could actually affect the organization 's infrastructure .
Additionally, they targeted countries that sided with Ukraine, such as Romania and Italy in the past, while the Legion “subgroup” attacked key entities in Norway and Lithuania for similar reasons.
Last month, the FBI announced that DDoS attacks carried out by pro-Russian agents (such as the one that targeted the European Parliament website) have had little effect on their targets. The attacks typically target public resources, such as websites, rather than actual services, resulting in little disruption.
Source: www.bleepingcomputer.com
