Danish political parties were targeted by pro-Russian hackers on Monday, November 17th—ahead of local and regional elections.
The websites of the Conservatives and the Red-Green Alliance were briefly unavailable this morning. The Copenhagen Post, an online newspaper covering Danish news in English, also went down temporarily.
The Danish Defence Intelligence Service said the likely cause was a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack aimed at the newspaper’s coverage of the November 18th elections.
The pro-Russian hacker group NoName057(16) claimed responsibility on social media, saying it had attacked several Danish political parties. Last week, the same group carried out attacks against several Danish municipalities, government websites, and a defence company.
In an early November risk assessment, the Danish intelligence service warned that cyberattacks were highly likely ahead of the local elections. Denmark’s Civil Protection Agency said it is monitoring the situation closely.
DDoS attacks work by overwhelming servers with traffic, making websites inaccessible. The same hacker network—which is known to deploy the tactic—was disrupted following raids in 12 countries between July 14th and 17th this year, according to European Union anti-crime bodies Europol and Eurojust.
.jpg){kind=link}