According to the Norwegian authorities, a severe cyber-attack has affected public and private websites in Norway on 28 June. Following the attack, Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store said, it “has not caused any significant damage.”
According to the Norwegian National Security Authority (NSM), the attacker mediated a distributed-denial-of-service (DDOS) attack in which the attacker floods the server with internet traffic to prevent users from accessing connected services. It has compromised the secure national data network by forcing the server into a temporary suspension of online services for hours.
The NSM head Sofie Nystrom said that the possible attacker was from a pro-Russian criminal group. They attacked due to the current political situation in Europe.
The nation’s media reported that the country’s ambassador to Moscow was summoned to the Foreign Ministry regarding a complaint. The Russian Federation claimed that Norway is preventing Russia’s supply to reach an Arctic Russian coal-mining establishment via Norway. This has happened following sanctions on Russia by the EU members. Norway has been blocking the pathway for Russia to claim the archipelago’s resources. According to a treaty of 1920, Norway has sovereignty over the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard which was called Spitsbergen at that time. However, Norway can not have all laws effective on the land mass. The treaty regulates a demilitarization of the archipelago and gives equal rights to Russia for commercial use of the resources.
Norway was attacked right after a hacking incident in Lithuania, temporarily knocking out all of the private and public websites. A pro-Moscow hacker group even claimed responsibility for the Lithuanian hacking incident. Lithuania was similarly hacked once the nation restricted the transport of steel and ferrous material to Russian territory following the EU sanctions on Russia.
