From: lessgovt@gmail.com   
      
   Europe’s Air-Traffic Agency Under Attack From Pro-Russian Hackers   
   By Bojan Pancevski, April 20, 2023, WSJ   
      
   Killnet, a Russian hacking group that has in the past called for nuclear   
   strikes against the U.S., shared on Wednesday night a post on their Telegram   
   social-media channel announcing an attack on Eurocontrol. The post called for   
   hackers to join what it    
   described as a marathon attack on Eurocontrol.   
      
   “From today, a Eurocontrol marathon is being held, lasting 100 hours,” the   
   post read.   
      
   The post suggested that the hack might have been a distributed d   
   nial-of-service, or DDoS, attack—a comparably unsophisticated and frequent   
   effort by cybercriminals to overwhelm servers by targeting them with a flood   
   of queries, sometimes using hacked    
   personal computers or connected devices.   
      
   Killnet also shared a post by another Telegram channel ostensibly run by   
   Russian military bloggers who cover their country’s aggression in Ukraine.   
   The post quoted Killnet hackers as saying that they had targeted Eurocontrol   
   because it was linked to    
   the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and supported Ukraine.   
      
   “This is why we will now cause great discomfort to all airline companies in   
   Europe,” the post read.   
      
   Eurocontrol is a critical part of air-traffic safety in Europe, managing   
   cross-border traffic across airspaces covered by national air-traffic   
   authorities. In addition, its office in Maastricht in the Netherlands provides   
   direct air-traffic control in    
   the upper airspace for that country as well as for Belgium, Luxembourg and   
   northwest Germany for both civilian and military flights.   
      
   Airline operations have so far been seemingly unaffected by the attack. A   
   handful of airline executives on Thursday said they had been unaware of the   
   siege on Eurocontrol’s network or any impact on operations into or within   
   European skies.   
      
   European authorities have grown concerned that Russia could attack parts of   
   Europe’s transport, communications, and energy infrastructure since it   
   invaded Ukraine in February last year, sparking its biggest confrontation with   
   the West since the Cold    
   War.   
      
   The cybersecurity authorities of the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Australia and New   
   Zealand, jointly known as the Five Eyes, issued a warning last year to all   
   critical infrastructure operators in these countries, saying that the Russian   
   government was    
   exploring options for potential cyberattacks in retaliation to Western   
   sanctions after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.   
      
   In the U.S., the Biden administration has repeatedly warned U.S. businesses,   
   including energy companies, that they could be targeted by Russian hackers as   
   a form of retaliation from the Kremlin.   
      
   European countries have experienced a string of sabotages and cyberattacks   
   since the beginning of the war, though none of them could be unequivocally   
   attributed to Russia.   
      
   Last October, railway traffic in northern Germany was brought to a standstill   
   for hours after unknown attackers simultaneously severed two data cables   
   hundreds of miles apart, taking down the railway operator’s internal   
   communication system and its    
   backup channel.   
      
   Two senior security officials told The Wall Street Journal that they saw   
   Russia as a potential suspect for the attack.   
      
   Later that month, Danish authorities said power on the Danish island of   
   Bornholm had gone down after an undersea power cable linking the island to   
   Denmark was severed.   
      
   The previous month, explosions destroyed three of four pipes making up the   
   Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines linking Germany directly to Russia through   
   the Baltic Sea. While they initially suspected Russia, German officials later   
   said they no longer    
   believed the country was responsible.   
      
   The bulk of Russia’s cyber activity has been concentrated within Ukraine’s   
   borders since the outbreak of the war, but Western allies have been on guard   
   against the potential for Russian cyberattacks on critical infrastructure.   
      
   So far, such attacks have failed to materialize. Instead, pro-Russian   
   hacktivist groups including Killnet have attempted to irritate Ukraine’s   
   allies with low-level attacks intended in part to grab attention, according to   
   Western security firms.   
      
   Researchers at Google and elsewhere have grown increasingly confident that   
   pro-Russian hackers and online activists are working with the country’s   
   military intelligence agency.   
      
   Killnet has attacked a range of entities, including targets in the U.S.,   
   Japan, Italy, Norway, Estonia and Lithuania with DDoS attacks, security   
   researchers say. The group appears to act, at times, in concert with another   
   pro-Russia hacktivist collective    
   called XakNet.   
      
   Killnet has granted interviews with Russian media over the past year, and   
   researchers say that the media attention—which reinforces the idea that   
   Russia’s war has gained popular support—may be a more important objective   
   than any cyber disruption.    
   DDoS attacks are considered relatively sophomoric and generally viewed more as   
   a nuisance than a serious cyber threat.   
      
   https://www.wsj.com/articles/europes-air-traffic-agency-under-at   
   ack-from-pro-russian-hackers-54b4514d   
      
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