Attack on NATO, who are the Killnet hackers
Several NATO sites have been hacked. This was confirmed by the spokesman of the Atlantic Alliance. The pro-Russian group of Killnet is accused. All the details
NATO sites under attack.
This was confirmed yesterday evening by a spokesperson for the Atlantic Alliance to the German press agency Dpa.
Previously, news had circulated on various social networks according to which pro-Russian activists had attacked, among others, the website of the NATO Special Operations Headquarters which was temporarily inaccessible.
The attack is believed to have been launched by the Killnet group. In fact, the latter claimed responsibility for the DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks but did not provide further details.
The group of hackers is the same one that hit the sites of Italian institutions last May, from the Senate to the Ministry of Defence. Usually this group takes advantage of Ddos attacks (distributed denial of service) which allows you to block the functioning of a site – or a service – through an overload of requests to the servers.
According to the British Telegraph , pro-Russian hackers have cut off contact between NATO and military aircraft delivering aid to the victims of the Turkish-Syrian earthquake.
All the details.
NATO SITES AFFECTED BY THE HACKER ATTACK
The cyber attack on the websites of the Atlantic Alliance has been confirmed. The website of NATO's special operations headquarters (NSHQ), which is based in Belgium, was down for only a couple of hours before being restored.
“NATO IT experts are actively addressing an incident affecting some NATO websites. NATO regularly deals with cyber incidents and takes cyber security very seriously,” the NATO source told dpa yesterday.
AID UNDER PRESSURE IN TURKEY?
Other networks affected by the attack included Strategic Airlift Capability (SAC), the Telegraph reveals. One of the NATO C-17 aircraft, believed to be carrying supplies to Incirlik air base in southern Turkey, received warning of the disruption in a message sent by a SAC executive via the ACARS network, according to the British newspaper. (Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System).
Although contact with the plane was not lost, it is likely that the hacker attack hampered the rescue efforts, the Telegraph points out.
THE POSITION OF THE ATLANTIC ALLIANCE
Fact denied by the organization.
"The classified NATO networks, those used for communications between NATO missions and operations and the command structure, have not been attacked and there are no indications that there has been an impact on NATO operations," NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg underlined today.
"It's one thing public sites, which we use to share information with the outside world, it's one thing classified networks that haven't been touched."
STOLTENBERG'S ASSURANCE
After which Stoltenberg added that “Cyberspace has always been contested and we at NATO face cyber attacks every day and have long since begun to respond and strengthen our cyber defenses. Since Sunday there have been attempted attacks of the DDS (Denial of Service) type against some NATO sites, we have introduced further protections".
"Most of the sites work normally, some still have problems but our technicians are working to restore full access" assured the Secretary General.
BEHIND THE KILLNET GROUP?
Western security agencies have described Killnet as a group of pro-Kremlin activists who aim to disrupt military and government websites of countries that support Ukraine with rather simple DDoS attacks.
Since the war in Ukraine began, Killnet has claimed responsibility for attacks on Romanian and Polish government sites, the European Parliament site , some American company sites and even the web infrastructure of some British hospitals, Skytg24 recalls.
On January 30, the pro-Russian group attacked the websites of 14 major US hospitals and universities , including Stanford and Duke. Also in the US, Killnet took down the websites of several major US airports and a handful of state government websites in October.
Denial-of-service attacks deployed by the pro-Russian attack group on critical US infrastructure could be a precursor to more serious cyberattacks. They warned US health care and security officials in early February, as revealed by Axios .
THE ALARM OF AMERICAN EXPERTS
According to Axios , so far Killnet threats and low-level DDoS attacks have typically been seen more as a nuisance than a real threat to US infrastructure.
But more and more organizations and security experts are warning that Killnet members have more capabilities than their less skilled attacks let on. “What you're seeing now is distributed denial of service,” Mike Hamilton, a hospital security consultant and head of information security at Critical Insight, told Axios earlier this month. “What comes next could be much worse,” he added.
Finally, The Health Sector Cybersecurity Coordination Center also warned that more experienced hackers would join Killnet in a mid-February alert.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/attacco-alla-nato-chi-sono-gli-hacker-di-killnet/ on Mon, 13 Feb 2023 14:47:27 +0000.