The European Parliament has experienced a cyber attack that started not long after it declared Russia to be a state sponsor of terrorism.

The Parliament on Wednesday passed a resolution that details Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, weighs international definitions of terrorism, and – over nine pages and 4250 words – concludes that Russia is a state sponsor of terrorism.

Not long after the resolution passed, this happened:

🚨The availability of @Europarl_EN website is currently impacted from outside due to high levels of external network traffic.

This traffic is related to a DDOS attack (Distributed Denial of Service) event.

EP teams are working to resolve this issue as quickly as possible.

— Jaume Duch (@jduch) November 23, 2022

The president of the Parliament, Roberta Metsola, explained the incident as follows:

The @Europarl_EN is under a sophisticated cyberattack. A pro-Kremlin group has claimed responsibility.

Our IT experts are pushing back against it & protecting our systems.

This, after we proclaimed Russia as a State-sponsor of terrorism.

My response: #SlavaUkraini

— Roberta Metsola (@EP_President) November 23, 2022

The attack appears to have made part of the Parliament’s website inoperable and made access impossible for a few hours.

A pro-Russian group called KILLNET appears to have claimed responsibility for the attack in this slightly NSFW Telegram post.

KILLNET is a plausible source of the attack. It is known to have used DDoS attacks on government websites – including trying to take out US government sites earlier this month.

Whatever the source, the IT team sorted things out. The Parliamentary website is once more available to the world – and the illegal invasion of Ukraine, and accompanying atrocities, continues. ®