Roberta Metsola says the pro-Russia group claims responsibility for the cyber attack.
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The European Parliament’s website has come under cyber attack by pro-Moscow groups just hours after lawmakers overwhelmingly approved a resolution naming Russia a country sponsor of terrorism, officials said.
Speaker Roberta Metsola said in a statement on Twitter that parliament was “under a sophisticated cyber attack” and “pro-Kremlin groups have claimed responsibility.”
According to Arab News, the spokesman for the parliament, Jaume Duch, said that the website “is now affected from outside because of the large network traffic outside.” He added that “the transmission is related to the DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack.”
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In a denial-of-service attack, instigators make websites inaccessible by using unwanted data packets to bomb them. DDoS attacks do not destroy networks because they do not penetrate them. But they can be a big problem, especially when they target sites that the public relies on for important information and services. “EU IT experts oppose this and defend our system,” Metsola said.
She says this came “after we declared Russia a state sponsor of terrorism.”
In a vote of 494 to 58 against 48, EU lawmakers want to increase pressure on Moscow to bring anyone responsible for war crimes committed since the beginning of the invasion on February 24 before the International Court of Justice.
The 27-nation EU condemned the attack in strong terms and repeatedly declared many of Russia’s actions in the past 9 months to be war crimes.
Sometimes state-backed criminals have used DDoS attacks as a smokescreen for more serious attacks, as in Ukraine before the February attack. 24 attacks. But mostly, they are used as political “noise” tools by hacktivists whose affiliations may be secret.
