Estonian state institutions suffered the worst cyber attack

Representatives of Estonia’s State Information System Department (RIA) said on Monday that the attacks on Saturday and Sunday targeted dozens of public sector websites. The main targets were the Department of Police and Border Protection, the Department of Revenue and Customs and the Ministry of Justice.

In recent years, the RIA has implemented technical countermeasures once morest a number of important public sector websites, according to representatives. If necessary, assistance is also provided to the private sector, especially to companies providing extremely important services.

“As a result, DDoS attacks typically have little or no visible impact. This time, RIA’s incident response unit, CERT-EE, also responded quickly and was able to mitigate the impact of the attacks. On Saturday, almost three billion malicious requests were sent to flood Estonian websites, but the most targeted websites experienced only temporary disruptions or were slower than normal, the report said.

RIA points out that large-scale DDoS attacks once morest Estonia’s public sector and private companies have been underway since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine more than two years ago.

Pro-Kremlin hacking groups have mostly claimed responsibility, as they did last weekend, officials said.

These attacks come in waves and are often linked to actions and statements of support for Ukraine. Such attacks are also being carried out once morest other countries, on the one hand, to show the Russian public that life in Western countries is being disrupted and, on the other hand, to try to spread confusion and instability in Western societies, RIA said in a statement.