Killnet Claims Responsibility for Cyberattacks Launched on Norway
According to the reports, the pro-Russian hacker group, Killnet, announced a cyberattack on Norway in their Telegram group.
Norwegian public and private sector websites were down because of the cyberattack. The websites were down in the early hours of Wednesday but later returned online at 1 p.m.
The website suffered a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack which prevented users from accessing it. Heigh Steinland, Head of Communications at BankID, confirmed to TV2 that their website had been attacked. The Norwegian Labor Inspection Authority website has also been down since Wednesday.
Buypass, an information technology company in Norway, confirmed that they had been experiencing unwanted traffic to some of their servers. Jorgen Ferkingstad, communications manager for Atlinn also confirmed a denial of service attack that had paralyzed their smooth running operations.
On their Telegram, the group posted a picture of the Norwegian Foreign Minister, Anniken Huitfeldt with what looks like a mask from the Disney character, Maleficent, and a text in the picture saying “Mrs Error”.
The group stated that their targets are the Norwegian Police, the ID gate at Difi, Nav, UDI, the Directorate of Digitalisation, and some other Norwegian websites and services.
They did not specify the reason behind the attack. Nonetheless, Norwegian media speculated one reason for the attack was because Norway blocked Russian supplies its destination.
Recent Attacks by Killnet
Killnet also launched a similar cyberattack on Lithuania. The Russian hackers claimed responsibility for the cyberattack on Lithuania this week. Lithuania reported that the offensive targeted public and private institution websites.
The group later claimed the attack was retaliation for Lithuania’s decision to halt the shipment of some goods to Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave, located between Poland and Lithuania.
Lithuania’s National Cyber Security Center said it is very likely that attacks of similar and greater intensity would continue in the coming days.
