The European Parliament attacked by hackers after a vote naming Russia as a sponsor of terrorism

The European Parliament’s website was down for several hours on Wednesday after “pro-Kremlin” hackers retaliated against Russia being designated as a state sponsor of terrorism, according to reports.

Earlier in the day, Reuters reported, European lawmakers voted to declare Russia a state sponsor of terrorism, saying the country’s use of military strikes on hospitals, schools and energy infrastructure violated international law.

Hacker in dark hoodie sitting in front of notebook with digital russian flag and binary streams background cyber security concept
(iStock)

The declaration is mainly symbolic because the European Union cannot enforce the declaration with a legal framework.

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After the vote, hackers brought down the European Parliament’s website for several hours, Reuters said, in a distributed denial-of-service attack. The site was back up and running two hours later.

“The European Parliament is under a sophisticated cyber attack,” European Parliament President Roberta Metsola said on Twitter. “A pro-Kremlin group has claimed responsibility. Our IT experts are backing down [and] protecting our systems.

“This, after proclaiming Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism. My answer: #SlavaUkrain,” he added, which means Glory to Ukraine.

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A distributed denial of service attack is “a malicious attempt to disrupt the normal traffic of a target server, service, or network by overwhelming the target or its surrounding infrastructure with a flood of Internet traffic.”

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