European Parliament hit by cyber attack after vote on Russia

The European Parliament was hit by a cyber attack claimed by pro-Kremlin hackers after lawmakers voted to deem Russia a state sponsor of terrorism on Wednesday.

Assistants to MEPs scrambled to find workarounds for parliament procedures as the attack hit in the middle of the parliament’s plenary session in Strasbourg, taking down online services that the lawmakers rely on during debates and voting sessions.

The incident occurred shortly after a majority of 494 MEPs passed a resolution accusing Russia of state sponsorship of terrorism and calling for its further international isolation.

The attack was claimed on Telegram by the pro-Kremlin hacker collective Killnet, which has rained cyber attacks on Ukraine and its Western supporters since Russia’s invasion of the country.

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With the European Parliament’s website inaccessible, spokesman Jaume Duch issued a statement about the incident on Twitter.

The website “is currently impacted from outside due to high levels of external network traffic,” he wrote.

“This traffic is related to a DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) event. EP teams are working to resolve this issue as quickly as possible.”

The attack took down internal services that MEPs use to access resolutions and voting results and to track the order of speakers in live chamber sessions so lawmakers know when they are up to speak, according to staff.

One staff member said meetings had been moved as some rooms were experiencing connection problems while others were more secure.

Roughly 90 minutes after the parliament announced its resolution on Russia had been passed, the Telegram channels Anonymous Russia and We are Killnet released website monitoring data showing interrupted service to the parliament website.

The channel declared that it was recognising the European Parliament as “sponsors of homosexuality” and that “shelling of the server” was under way.

The message was posted alongside other updates celebrating the bombardment of Ukrainian energy infrastructure as “throwing large cities into the Stone Age”.

Killnet is a loosely-grouped network of pro-Russian hackers that has grown in prominence during the year as it launched DDOS attacks against a string of targets in western countries including Britain, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Italy, Norway and the United States, typically in retaliation for support for Ukraine.

The parliament’s resolution had called for the EU to “further isolate Russia internationally” and swiftly put in place a ninth package of sanctions “against the backdrop of the Kremlin’s escalating acts of terror against Ukrainian civilians”.

“MEPs highlight that the deliberate attacks and atrocities committed by Russian forces and their proxies against civilians in Ukraine, the destruction of civilian infrastructure and other serious violations of international and humanitarian law amount to acts of terror and constitute war crimes,” the parliament said in a statement after it was passed.

[ Blackouts sweep Ukraine after latest deadly Russian missile salvo ]

The resolution was passed with 494 votes in favour, 58 against, and 44 abstentions. Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, and Green MEPs voted in favour along with Left independent Luke Ming Flanagan. Left independents Clare Daly and Mick Wallace voted against, while Sinn Féin’s Chris MacManus did not vote.

European Parliament president Roberta Metsola described the incident as a “sophisticated cyber attack”.

“My response: #SlavaUkraini” she wrote on Twitter.