Eurocontrol hacked by pro-Russian gang KillNet

Eurocontrol, the European Organization for the Safety of Air Navigation is the latest victim of the pro-Russian hacktivist group KillNet.

The intergovernmental aviation organization confirmed they had been under attack since Wednesday.

“Since 19 April, the EUROCONTROL website has been under attack, claimed by pro-Russian hackers,” EuroControl said in an official statement posted on their website.

“The attack is causing interruptions to the website and web availability,” the notice said.

Eurocontrol, which monitors air traffic safety for 41 member states, including civilian and military air space.

“There has been no impact on European aviation,” Eurocontrol said.

The group titled the post “DDOS collective,” seemingly for the type of attack the group most often uses against its victims.

A Distributed Denial Service attack, or DDoS, overpowers a website or server with traffic requests causing the site to crash.

Meanwhile, KillNet, a known pro-Russian hacktivist group, has been boasting about going after the aviation organization on its official Telegram channel since Wednesday.

“Goodbye Eurocontrol😇,” the group titled a series of posts referring to the attack.

“This organization seems to be harmless, but unfortunately it is part of the nato.int organization,” KillNet said.

“⚡️So today we will bring great inconvenience to all European airlines!,” the group said.

KillNet has been stepping up attacks against Western allies of Ukraine ever since the Russian invasion last spring.

As part of its propaganda campaign against the aviation agency, KillNet posted a tweet from Eurocontrol’s Director General Raúl Medina Caballero.

“Very pleased that we have now made the first payment to Ukraine from the Solidarity Fund set up by our Member States,” the Director General tweeted back in February.

The cyberattack reportedly took the Eurocontrol website completely offline on Thursday, while KillNet continued to post information belonging to the organization’s DNS servers, gateways, Network operations portal, and remote access services.

KillNet also posted a sample cache of emails addresses and passwords allegedly belonging to Eurocontrol’s nearly 2000 employees.

Also on Thursday, KillNet unleashed another hacking campaign, this time targeting thousands of individuals linked to NATO.

The group started leaking the sensitive information of over 4,000 individuals on its Telegram channel, coinciding with a visit to Ukraine’s capital city of Kyiv by NATO’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.

KillNet had also claimed to have leaked documents from NATO NCS, the North Atlantic Alliance’s Communications and Information Agency.

Since the start of 2023, KillNet has targeted dozens of healthcare organizations in the US, as well as the German arms manufacturer Rheinmetall, as retaliation for pledging military tank support to the Ukrainian government.

Last month KillNet joined another pro-Russian group, Anonymous Sudan, in targeting multiple educational organizations in Australia.