For the second day in a row, a pro-Russian hacking collective has targeted Belgian websites, this time focussing on websites of several municipalities and ports. New attacks during Sunday's elections have also been hinted at.
Websites of several Belgian municipalities and ports were the targets of successive Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks – in which excessive online traffic is sent to a website making it temporarily unavailable – on Tuesday, the Centre for Cybersecurity Belgium (CCB) confirmed.
The attack originated from the pro-Russian hacker collective NoName057, which was also behind cyberattacks that affected several websites of cities and provinces in the country on Monday.
"These attacks are announced and carried out by a pro-Russian hacktivist group targeting European and NATO-related targets," the government agency said. "In particular, the group targets government agencies, the media and private companies, aiming to attract media attention."
The collective announces its attacks in advance: this morning, a list of Belgian municipalities and ports was posted on the group's Telegram channel. So far, Sint-Genesius-Rode, Bever, Wemmel, Wezembeek-Oppem and Linkebeek in Flemish Brabant, Ronse in East Flanders and Spiere-Helkijn in West Flanders have been targeted.
The Port of Antwerp-Bruges website was also hit by attacks, as was the Port of Liège's website and that of the European Seaport Organisation, headquartered in Brussels.
'Mainly inconvenient'
Some organisations under attack have already taken temporary anti-DDOS measures to mitigate the impact. "The CCB sends alerts to potential victims so they can protect themselves faster."
Systems are not broken into, and there is no disruption to services, aside from the affected websites being offline for a limited time. "A DDoS attack is not a sophisticated attack but requires a lot of effort from the affected service to get the network fully back online. The consequences are mostly inconvenient."
According to the CCB, further disruptions are expected in the coming hours "depending on the intensity of the attack and the protective measures taken".
Meanwhile, the hacker collective hinted at a new attack during municipal and provincial council elections on Sunday, 13 October. However, Flemish Home Affairs Minister Hilde Crevits (CD&V) has reassured there is no cause for concern.
"The voting process will be safely organised. The voting machines are in no way connected to the Internet and therefore cannot be hacked," she told Belga News Agency. There is also no threat to the transmission of voting results. "In the run-up to the elections, we have taken various measures to ensure the cybersecurity of the election software."
