The notorious ransomware gang NoName057(16) has claimed the alleged Danish Parliament cyber attack.
In a post on the hacker collective’s Telegram channel, they asserted responsibility for targeting the website of the Danish Parliament.
While there is no confirmation whether the alleged Danish Parliament cyber attack was successful, the official website displayed a “connection timed out” error (also known as a 522 error code).
The Cyber Express team has reached out to the public relations department of the Danish Parliament for an official statement on the security incident but is yet to receive a response.
Danish Parliament cyber attack: Website unavailability and error details
At present, attempts to access the Danish Parliament’s website result in a connection failure, preventing users from accessing its contents.
While the Cloudflare service, which acts as a content delivery network for the website, appears to be functioning normally, the website’s host is experiencing difficulties. This disruption has led to an interruption in online services provided by the Danish Parliament.
This disruption may impede the efficient communication between the parliament and the public, hindering the exchange of vital information and potentially affecting the transparency of governmental processes.
Danish Parliament cyber attack, a cause of concern
Despite the severity of the Danish Parliament cyber attack, the Parliament has not issued an official response regarding the cyber incident.
The Danish Parliament cyber attack raises significant concerns regarding the overall cybersecurity infrastructure of critical government institutions.
Pro-Russian threat actor NoName057(16) has claimed many such attacks in a span of a few months. Among the recently added names to the victim list, NoName included two Sweden websites — The Swedish Armed Forces and the Swedish Parliament websites.
Like in the case of Danish Parliament cyber attack, the website of the Security Service of Ukraine, the main intelligence and security agency of the Ukrainian government, was inaccessible at the time of reporting.
Danish Parliament cyber attack: Latest but not the last
The recent cyber incident involving the Danish Parliament’s website is unlikely to be the last in the series of attacks mounted by NoName057(16) on critical governmental institutions that oppose Russian ambitions in the West.
In a bid to counter the West’s counter moves on pro-Russian threat actors, NoName recently requested volunteers to participate in their activities. These activities included carrying out DDoS attacks on targets that were critical of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The volunteers who participated in the campaign named DDosia were paid up to 80,000 Rubles, which is approximately $1,200, in cryptocurrency as compensation for their attacks if they were effective.
According to researchers at Avast, social media has been used to call on individuals to become hacktivists and download DDoS tools to take down Russian websites in support of Ukraine since the beginning of the Ukraine war.
Avast discovered that users in countries such as Canada and Germany tried to download the DDosia executable file to carry out DDoS attacks and bypass the anti-malware software’s exception list on their computers.
The hacktivist group rewarded the users for their success in carrying out the DDoS attacks, and they found that their success rate increased significantly as a result.
It is crucial that governments worldwide prioritize proactive security strategies, foster collaboration, and employ advanced technologies to protect their online presence and maintain essential services without disruption.