Agency Report

A pro-Russia cybercrime group attacked Romanian government websites over the country’s support for Ukraine, Romania’s cybersecurity agency said on Friday.

A series of attacks hit “public institutions and private entities”, Romania’s National Cybersecurity Agency said in a statement.

The so-called Ddos attacks, where multiple requests are sent to a website to overload its servers, knocked several websites offline for a few minutes, including the defence ministry, border police and railways.

The cybersecurity agency said a group called “Killnet” posted a message on Telegram saying they had carried out the attacks because of “Romania’s support for Ukraine in the military conflict with Russia”.

Romania’s intelligence service said the cybercriminals had “exploited vulnerabilities” in the websites by “taking control of equipment operating outside Romania”.

It added that Killnet had recently targeted official websites of the United States, Poland, the Czech Republic, Estonia and NATO.

The United States and its major partners in the “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance last week said they had information warning of massive Russian cyberattacks being prepared against Ukraine’s allies.

AFP