It seems that as a result of Russia’s Ukraine invasion, the cyber attacks between governments as well as supporters of those have been escalating. Just, back in April a vlogger, Boxmining, in a YouTube video streaming asked for help to cyber-attack Russian institutions. Now, it is Lithuania warns that a steep increase in distributed denial of service attacks directed against public official sites in the country.
DDoS attacks against government sites in the rise
DDoS is a certain type of cyberattack that results in internet servers being swamped by a large number of demands and spam traffic; resulting in the sites and services being out of reach for genuine visitors and users. According to The National Cyber Security Center of Lithuania due to such cyberattacks, the transportation agencies, financial institutions, and other large entities have encountered temporary service disruptions in the country. The agency published a warning containing guidance to defend against all types of DDoS attacks. On their website they said;
« The NCSC urges all managers of critical information infrastructure and state information resources to take additional security measures and to follow the NCSC recommendations for protection against service disruption attacks »
It is considered a Russian penalty to Lithuania for supporting Ukraine as these attacks have just come after a Russian group of hacktivists called “Legion – Cyber Spetsnaz RF” broadcasted on Telegram announcing a cyberwar against several Lithuanian institutions. The hacktivists listed several organizations including big banks, mass media groups, airports, internet providers, logistic companies, energy companies, and various state and ministry websites.
This specific group of hackers is a spin-off of the Killnet group. Romanian government websites and Italian state platforms also were attacked by this notorious group in recent months. The Lithuanian official websites became the target of Russian hackers with DDoS attacks because, as part of EU sanctions, the Lithuanian government applied a limited goods transportation barricade between Russia and the Kaliningrad.