Shortly before the election: Russian hackers take over several political parties’ websites

With only one day until the election, several Danish parties have experienced outages or slow response times on their websites.

According to Danish news outlet DR’s tech correspondent Henrik Moltke, the digital attack was caused by the pro-Russian hacker group NoName057(16).

They hit Alternative, Borgernes Parti, Konservative, Moderaterne, Radikale Venstre, Socialdemokratiet and SF as well as the official website of the Parliament.

An attack does not necessarily mean that a site is shut down, it can also mean that a site is unavailable for a period of time.

It is possible for the parties to prevent the overload using technical solutions.

However, DR has observed that SF’s and Konservatives website has been unavailable for a period of time.

– I can see that some of the parties have been able to protect themselves immediately. This is because they have purchased protection against these DDoS or overload attacks, Moltke says to DR.

The hacker group focuses on Danish targets

The hacker group already announced a week ago that they would target Danish websites ahead of the municipal elections and Denmark’s support for Ukraine.

The group writes on the social media site X that they have also had contact with the websites of DR and Mind Energy, formerly known as Energi Danmark.

Last week, the group claimed responsibility for attacks on 21 Danish websites.

The attacks affected municipalities, ministries, the police, the company Terma and Borger.dk, among others.

These are DDoS attacks that overload systems with requests so that ordinary users cannot gain access.

TV 2’s digital intelligence correspondent Peter Møller believes that the attacks most likely originate from NoName057(16).

He points out that the group has claimed responsibility on its Telegram channel, even though that is not necessarily a guarantee that they did the attack.

He also points out that the group has previously hired hackers to carry out the attacks for payment and that the leaders are connected to the regime in Moscow.