Pro-Russian cyberattacks hit Belgium for fourth consecutive day
Belgium was hit by pro-Russian cyber attacks for the fourth consecutive day on Thursday. In its latest attack, the Russian hacking group NoName057 targeted the websites of banking services and the Belgian Centre for Cybersecurity.
On Thursday morning, the group targeted the websites of the banking services association Febelfin and the Federal Public Service for Economy, the Centre for Cybersecurity Belgium (CCB) confirmed.
Later on Thursday, the website of the CCB itself was made inaccessible by the group. The ports of Antwerp, Zeebrugge, Liège and Brussels were also targeted.
DDoS attack
The websites were hit by a distributed denial-of-service attack, or DDoS, which overwhelms servers with massive amounts of traffic, rendering them unusable. Similar attacks, claimed by the same hacker group, were carried out on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.
The website of the Federal Public Service for Economy was back online less than half an hour after the group announced its attack on Telegram, but the websites of Febelfin and the CCB were still down at 14.00 on Thursday.
'Just an inconvenience'
On social media, the hacker group said it had targeted the CCB because of its "false statements" about the "harmlessness" of its attacks. The group claimed to have disrupted the operation of the PSA and MPET terminals in the port of Antwerp between Tuesday and Wednesday, but this could not be confirmed.
The CCB confirmed that its website had been targeted, but insisted that the attack was harmless. "They want to show that they are dangerous, but once again these attacks are just an inconvenience and cause no damage. We are working hard to get the site back online," the CCB said.
© AFP PHOTO / THOMAS SAMSON
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