EU Parliament Website Knocked Offline

The European Parliament’s website didn’t work for several hours when it had been taken down after a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack by Anonymous Russia, which is part of the pro-Russian hacktivist group Killnet.

European Parliament President Roberta Metsola messaged on Twitter about the incident saying that the Parliament's "IT experts are pushing back against it & protecting our systems." 

The Director General for Communication and Spokesperson of the European Parliament, Jaume Dauch, confirmed that the outage was caused by an ongoing DDoS attack. "The availability of Europarl_EN website is currently impacted from outside due to high levels of external network traffic... This traffic is related to a DDOS attack. EP teams are working to resolve this issue as quickly as possible." Dauche said on Twitter

The attack came after the European Parliament recognised Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism and MEPs called for further international isolation of Russia.

The resolution was adopted following recent developments in Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine.
"Parliament calls on the European Union to further isolate Russia internationally, including when it comes to Russia's membership of international organisations and bodies such as the United Nations Security Council," a press release said. "MEPs also want diplomatic ties with Russia to be reduced, EU contacts with official Russian representatives to be kept to the absolute minimum and Russian state-affiliated institutions in the EU spreading propaganda around the world to be closed and banned."

Earlier on Wednesday 23rd November, lawmakers voted to declare Russia a state sponsor of terrorism, arguing Moscow's military strikes on civilian targets such as energy infrastructure, hospitals, schools and shelters violated international law.

Pro-Kremlin hacktivist groups have targeted European and US websites since Russia invaded Ukraine. Killnet recently claimed responsibility for aid large-scale DDoS attacks targeting the websites of several major US airports, including those in Los Angeles and Atlanta. 

European Parliament:     Roberta Metsola:   Jaume Duch:     Reuters:       Bleeping Computer:      Politico:     DW: 

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