The European Parliament has experienced a cyber attack that started not long after it declared Russia to be a state sponsor of terrorism.
The Parliament on Wednesday passed a resolution that details Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, weighs international definitions of terrorism, and – over nine pages and 4250 words – concludes that Russia is a state sponsor of terrorism.
Not long after the resolution passed, this happened:
🚨The availability of @Europarl_EN website is currently impacted from outside due to high levels of external network traffic.
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.— Jaume Duch (@jduch) November 23, 2022
The president of the Parliament, Roberta Metsola, explained the incident as follows:
The @Europarl_EN is under a sophisticated cyberattack. A pro-Kremlin group has claimed responsibility.
Our IT experts are pushing back against it & protecting our systems.
This, after we proclaimed Russia as a State-sponsor of terrorism.
My response: #SlavaUkraini
— Roberta Metsola (@EP_President) November 23, 2022
The attack appears to have made part of the Parliament’s website inoperable and made access impossible for a few hours.
A pro-Russian group called KILLNET appears to have claimed responsibility for the attack in this slightly NSFW Telegram post.
KILLNET is a plausible source of the attack. It is known to have used DDoS attacks on government websites – including trying to take out US government sites earlier this month.
Whatever the source, the IT team sorted things out. The Parliamentary website is once more available to the world – and the illegal invasion of Ukraine, and accompanying atrocities, continues. ®