ackers claimed Monday
to have made a successful denial-of-service attack on the Belgian
National Bank, shutting down the bank’s website for most of the morning.
The attack followed a series of hacks over the weekend by the same cyber criminal group, which included attacks on the website of the Belgian Agency for Nuclear Control, the federal Crisis Center (coordinating the government’s security actions) and the federal Cyber Emergency Team’s website.
“From Friday onwards, websites have been periodically inaccessible,” said Miguel De Bruycker, director of the federal Center for Cybersecurity. “There is an investigation ongoing and we are providing all elements to prosecutors,” he said.
“It is the first time such a whole series of short, criminal incidents has happened,” he added.
Authorities suspect the Belgian hackers purchased the botnet, or group of computers carrying out the DDoS attack, from a foreign criminal network.
The hacker collective goes by the name DownSec and uses symbols similar to those used by the global hacking network Anonymous. They claim to fight against “the abuses of a corrupt government” in a mission statement on their Facebook page.
Source: Politico.eu
The attack followed a series of hacks over the weekend by the same cyber criminal group, which included attacks on the website of the Belgian Agency for Nuclear Control, the federal Crisis Center (coordinating the government’s security actions) and the federal Cyber Emergency Team’s website.
“From Friday onwards, websites have been periodically inaccessible,” said Miguel De Bruycker, director of the federal Center for Cybersecurity. “There is an investigation ongoing and we are providing all elements to prosecutors,” he said.
“It is the first time such a whole series of short, criminal incidents has happened,” he added.
Authorities suspect the Belgian hackers purchased the botnet, or group of computers carrying out the DDoS attack, from a foreign criminal network.
The hacker collective goes by the name DownSec and uses symbols similar to those used by the global hacking network Anonymous. They claim to fight against “the abuses of a corrupt government” in a mission statement on their Facebook page.
Source: Politico.eu