Estonia's state institutions hit by largest cyberattack to date

Estonia's state institutions hit by largest cyberattack to date. Photo: Sander Ilvest

Over the weekend, the websites of many of Estonia's state institutions were hit by the largest wave of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks seen here to date, but thanks to the measures taken, their impact was not great.

Spokespeople for the Estonian Information System Authority (RIA) said on Monday that the attacks targeted a few dozen public sector websites on Saturday and Sunday. The main targets were the Police and Border Guard Board, the Tax and Customs Board and the Ministry of Justice, whose websites were subjected to the most intense attacks on Saturday afternoon.

The spokespeople said that in recent years, RIA has implemented technical countermeasures that cover most of the major public sector websites and services. Assistance is also provided to the private sector if necessary, especially to companies providing vital and essential services.

«As a result, DDoS attacks usually have no visible impact or the impact is minimal. This time, too, the CERT-EE incident response department of RIA reacted quickly and managed to mitigate the impact of the attacks. On Saturday, nearly three billion malicious requests were sent to overwhelm Estonian websites, but the most heavily targeted sites only experienced brief disruptions or were slower than usual,» they said.

According to RIA, large-scale DDoS attacks have been carried out against Estonian public sector websites and services, as well as those of private companies, since the start of full-scale war in Ukraine two years ago.

«Pro-Kremlin hacktivist groups have mostly claimed responsibility for the attacks, and this was also the case last weekend,» the spokespeople said.

The attacks come in waves and are often linked to actions and statements in support ofr Ukraine. Such attacks are carried out against many other countries as well. On the one hand, these attacks are intended for Russia's public to show that they are disrupting life in Western countries, which are quite heavily dependent on e-solutions, but on the other hand they also attempt to sow confusion and instability in Western societies, the press release by RIA said.