On Thursday, February 1, numerous denial-of-service attacks were reported in Finland. In addition to the websites of several cities, Varusteleka was also targeted by hackers.
On February 1st, Varusteleka’s website was the target of a denial of service attack. Several cities have reported similar problems. Adobe Stock / Jukka Lehtinen
Varusteleka, a Finnish military surplus and camping specialist store, says on social media that it was the target of a cyber attack on Thursday. The company’s website was unusable for a couple of hours in the afternoon.
– This is to thank our dear neighbor Russia, and the cyber attack it delivered in the form of DDoS, Varusteleka’s Facebook says.
DDoS stands for denial of service attack, which is a very traditional way of disrupting a website. Typically, a DDoS attack is carried out by directing so much traffic to the target site at once that it is not possible to use the site.
– Don’t worry, the store is up again and the attack has been repelled! Defense lines have been reinforced in case of an attack. It’s worth trying! the company defiantly acknowledges.
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The company commented on the case in more detail in a media release sent in the afternoon. According to Varusteleka, the attack from Russia was initially repelled.
– However, the attack continued and moved from the direction of Texas. In this way, the attack managed to bypass the DDoS protection of Varusteleka’s servers, as a result of which the website’s operation was interrupted or the website could not be contacted at all, the release states.
Interruptions in the operation of several sites
Several other parties also reported on Thursday about service blocking attacks on their websites.
The websites of the cities of Helsinki, Espoo, Turku, Tampere and Kuopio, among others, had problems on Thursday that hindered access to them.
The Bank of Finland also reported on the message service X on Thursday about the cyber attack on its website.
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Yle: In this case, Russian hackers
Mightily according to the information, the well-known Russian hacker group NoName 057(16) has registered as the perpetrator of the denial-of-service attacks.
– The activity has been like this for about a year, and from last autumn onward it was much more active. Pro-Russian groups put up a target list in the morning and then denial-of-service attacks are carried out against various sites, Cybersecurity Center’s information security expert Matias Mesia stated to Yle.