NCSC Reports: Swiss Government Sites Targeted in Russian-Linked DDoS Attacks

This week, Swiss websites encountered a series of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. According to the Swiss National Cybersecurity Centre (NCSC), these assaults temporarily disrupted access to several websites managed by the Federal Administration.

“As an attack had been expected in the run-up to the visit, the NCSC warned the operators of critical infrastructures of this kind of attack on 10 January and called on them to take the necessary precautions,” the NCSC stated.

DDoS attacks are typically aimed at rendering websites inaccessible for a certain period, but they do not usually result in data loss or compromise.

Responsibility for these attacks was claimed by a hacking group known as “NoName057(16)” through their public Telegram channel. This group is notorious for its DDoS attacks on financial institutions, government websites, and transportation services across numerous European countries. It is believed that their activities have a geopolitical nature.

In addition to Swiss government sites, the cybercriminals also claim to have targeted websites of local airports, railways, hotels, and restaurants.

“Hackers generally use such attacks on website availability as a means of gaining me-dia attention for their cause. They do this by flooding a website with a massive volume of requests so as to overload it and make it unavailable for a period of time. No data is lost or compromised in a DDoS attack,” the NCSC reports.

Cybersecurity experts note that since March 2022, the group has conducted over 1,500 DDoS attacks, utilizing publicly available cloud and web services as platforms for DDoS botnets.

Following the attacks on Switzerland, the group quickly shifted their focus to Estonia, launching an attack on the website of a local airline.