Hackers sympathetic to Russia are believed to be responsible for a cyber attack on the websites of the Icelandic parliament, the cabinet and technology companies on Tuesday as the country struggles to defend itself against such attacks.
Following a series of cyberattacks, the websites of the parliament and the Council of Ministers were down on Tuesday morning as confirmed by Guðmundur Arnar Sigmundsson, director of the cyber security team CERT-IS.
According to Guðmundar, the attacks are so-called DDOS attacks, of a similar nature to those carried out on public websites in the run-up to the Council of Europe summit in Reykjavík last month, although they were not as extensive.
DDOS attacks consist of sending heavy internet traffic to websites, which causes them to crash. However, such attacks do not cause permanent damage to computer systems, and no data is at risk.
The pro-Russian hacking group NoName057 claimed responsibility for cyberattacks on the Icelandic government last month.
The website of the technology company Advania was also attacked, but according to information from the company, the attacks were potent and particularly well executed.
Guðmundur explained that it could be difficult to defend against these attacks, as it is necessary to distinguish between legal internet traffic and an organised attack.
Still, so-called defences allow website owners to fend off such organised attacks, though these always need updating.
“These defences need to understand what’s legal traffic, which is a normal person trying to get into a website, and what’s a collection of illegal traffic, which is just online bots flooding the website,” he said, adding that those responsible for such attacks know how the defences work and are therefore constantly testing new versions.
“In some cases, like now and before the summit, defences don’t catch this automatically. Then you have to react and bring things back in order,” he added.
(Charles Szumski | EURACTIV.com)
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