The European Parliament website was down for several hours on Wednesday after “Pro-Kremlin” hackers retaliated against Russia’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism, according to reports.
Earlier in the day, Reuters reported, European lawmakers voted to declare Russia a state sponsor of terrorism, saying the country’s use of military strikes on hospitals, schools and energy infrastructure violated international law.
Hacker in a dark hoodie sitting in front of a laptop with digital Russian flag and binary streams background cybersecurity concept
(iStock)
The declaration is mainly symbolic because the European Union cannot enforce the declaration with a legal framework.
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After the vote, hackers blocked the European Parliament’s website for several hours, Reuters said, with a distributed denial-of-service attack. The site was back up two hours later.
“The European Parliament is under a sophisticated cyberattack,” said the president of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, on Twitter. “A pro-Kremlin group has claimed responsibility. Our IT experts are lobbying against it.” [and] protecting our systems.
“This, after we proclaimed Russia a state sponsor of terrorism. My answer: #SlavaUkraini,” she added, meaning Glory to Ukraine.
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A distributed denial-of-service attack is “a malicious attempt to disrupt the normal traffic of a targeted server, service, or network by overwhelming the target or its surrounding infrastructure with an avalanche of Internet traffic.”
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