The website of the EU parliament experienced a significant cyber attack on Wednesday shortly after it declared Russia a state sponsor of terrorism.
Just moments after passing a resolution classifying the Russian Federation as a state sponsor of terrorism, the EU Parliament experienced a significant cyber attack that appeared to knock its website largely offline.
Spearheaded by the populist Sweden Democrat parliamentarian Charlie Weimers MEP, the symbolic resolution condemning the actions of Vladimir Putin’s Russia was overwhelmingly passed by the bloc’s parliament, with 494 votes in favour of the resolution versus 58 against.
According to a report by POLITICO, however, the success of the vote was soon followed by a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) cyber attack on the European Parliament website, which the publication claims largely knocked it offline.
Indeed, the parliament website was largely unavailable to the public around 2pm, but was back up again by Thanksgiving.
A number of sources within the European Union have now linked the attack to Russian hacking group Killnet, which is reported as having repeatedly used DDoS methods against perceived enemies of Putin’s Russia.
“We have a strong indication that it is from Killnet, the hackers with links to Russia”, Eva Kaili MEP, the vice-president of the parliament, has reportedly claimed.
“This is my information, but it is under control,” she continued. “It only cut the external access to the Parliament’s website.”
While the hack could be seen as an attempt by ultimately unknown actors to punish the European institution for once again taking on Russia over its aggressive war in Ukraine, the incident appears to so-far have had the opposite effect.
For example, speaking to Breitbart Europe, Charlie Weimers MEP of the European Conservatives and Reformists group emphasised that the hack only showed the value in the resolution the parliament had just passed.
“The cyber attack on the European Parliament confirms the importance of this resolution,” the Swedish representative largely responsible for spearheading the initiative remarked.
Although the measure is largely symbolic, Weimers has said that not only does it show solidarity with those fighting in Ukraine, but could also serve as a springboard for EU authorities to implement other measures targeting the Russian Federation, such as the seizure of Russian assets for the benefit of rebuilding the invaded nation.
“Now it is up to the Member States and the institutions to come up with a legal framework to see this through,” the MEP concluded.
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