NATO Meeting Place Website Targeted by Kremlin Cybergang

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Many Russian malicious cyber agents are working to disrupt the NATO summit in Vilnius.

The threat group “NoName” claimed credit for taking down several websites in Lithuania, including the exhibition center LITEXPO, where the NATO summit is taking place as of now. The attacks have also disrupted the NATO multimedia website and several websites of Lithuanian water, district heating and utility companies. The day prior to the attack, the attacking agents focused on the public transport websites of Vilnius.

According to Cybernews, NoName claims that it managed to shut down the website of the Lithuanian exhibition and congress center LITEXPO, where the meeting is hosted. One of the most notable targets was NATO’s multimedia website natomultimedia.tv, which was unavailable at the time of writing, along with a few other nato.int subdomains.

Cybernews elaborates that the attacks are carried out by the DDoS method. DDoS stands for Distributed Denial of Service. During DDoS attacks, vast numbers of “bots” from multiple locations try to connect to the same server until it is unable to respond to all requests. Legitimate users then cannot access the needed services.

This type of attack does not affect the physical infrastructure and therefore does not usually cause long-term damage, and is regarded within the cyber community as more of a short-term nuisance.

The head of the National Cyber Security Center of Lithuania (NKSC) Liudas Ališauskas delivered a statement on Monday in which he urged residents of Vilnius to remain vigilant over the coming days spanning the NATO summit, think critically, and report anything suspicious to the relevant authorities.

Information provided by Cybernews.