Russian hackers target Finland parliament’s website

Pro-Russian hackers took down the website of Finland’s parliament, citing Helsinki’s NATO application as the reason behind the DDoS attack.

The website of the Finnish parliament went down for several hours yesterday after a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack launched by Russian threat actors.

“A denial-of-service attack is directed against the Parliament’s external websites. […] The Parliament takes steps to limit the attack together with service providers and the Cybersecurity Center,” the Finnish parliament said in a statement.

Pro-Russian hacker group NoName057(16) claimed responsibility for the attack on their Telegram channel. Threat actors alluded to Finland’s NATO aspirations as the reason for the raid.

“We decided to pay a ‘friendly’ visit to neighboring Finland, whose authorities are so eager to join NATO,” Russian hackers boasted on Telegram.

The attack against the Finnish parliament’s website occurred the same day US president Joe Biden signed ratification documents expressing Washington’s support for Finland and Sweden joining NATO.

Finland applied for NATO membership on 18 May amidst Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which sparked the largest military conflict in Europe since the end of the Second World War.

Hacker wars

In late June, NoName057(16), together with another pro-Russian syndicate Killnet, carried out several DDoS attacks against countries supporting Ukraine.

Government websites in Italy, Romania, Germany, Norway, Lithuania as well as websites in Czechia, Latvia, and elsewhere were under cyber fire. The pro-Russian group has declared war against NATO and countries that support Ukraine.

The conflict between hacker groups started after Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February. Groups supporting Ukraine started targeting organizations in Russia to help the country defend against the invasion.

Kyiv succeeded in rallying an international IT army to help it fight the digital war. Anonymous, Ukraine’s IT Army, Hacker Forces, and many other hacktivist groups started targeting Russia’s private and state-owned enterprises.

According to the United Nations, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has created the ‘fastest-growing refugee crisis in Europe since World War II.’ Over 12 million people were displaced due to the conflict in a nation with 44 million residents.

Witness testimonies from Ukrainian towns Russian forces have occupied for close to a month point to severe human rights violations and targeted lethal attacks against civilians. Reports of “gross and systematic violations and abuses of human rights” got Russia suspended from the UN Human Rights Council.