Ahead of the local and European elections last week, hackers believed to be originating from Russia and associated with the nation’s intelligence services, aimed their sights at various Irish websites. State enterprises including voter registration portal voter.ie and the websites of the Houses of the Oireachtas, Transport for Ireland and Irish Rail were among those targeted by low-impact Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks, as reported by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC). However, the attacks, which involve inundating a website with an excessive number of access requests within a short period, had minimal effect on the functionality of the targeted sites.
The NCSC further clarified that such assaults are part of a larger pattern targeting EU member states, and are typically low-cost and designed to draw attention rather than inflict significant harm. Ireland wasn’t the only country hit by these attacks; Sweden and Spain were also impacted. Sources believe that the attacks were a show of support for Moscow and were orchestrated by a hacker group supportive of the Kremlin, known as HackNeT. This group, which cyber security specialists have accused of colluding with Russian intelligence agencies, also directed similar attacks at the European Court of Auditors as well as certain Dutch political parties.
Aware of the escalating threat of cyber-attacks and misinformation campaigns with the impending European elections, EU officials had previously cautioned against such disruptions. In some cases, campaigns linked to Russia have reportedly encouraged voters to either spoil their ballots or abstain from voting altogether. Within Ireland, the NCSC is actively collaborating with the Garda and the Electoral Commission to safeguard election infrastructure.
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