The websites of several Danish political parties were targeted on Monday in a cyberattack claimed by pro-Russian hackers on the eve of local and regional elections.
The Danish Agency for Social Security said it was “aware that certain political party websites were unavailable this morning due to distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks”, adding that it was monitoring the situation along with military intelligence.
“DDoS attacks are part of the normal picture,” it said in a statement. “The actors behind these attacks carry out the overload attacks partly to harass and attract attention.”
The sites of the Conservatives and the Red-Green Alliance were briefly unavailable early on Monday, an Agence France-Presse journalist said.
The Copenhagen Post, an English-language online newspaper covering Danish news, was also affected.
“We have been informed by the Danish Defence Intelligence Service that the likely cause is a DDoS attack, with our coverage of the November 18 local elections making us a target,” it wrote on Instagram.