DDoS attacks target EU political parties as elections begin

Hacktivists are conducting DDoS attacks on European political parties that represent and promote strategies opposing their interests, according to a report by Cloudflare.

The European Parliament elections are already underway in the Netherlands and are set to begin in 26 more countries across the EU over the coming days, igniting politically motivated cyberattacks.

Cloudflare reports that it has mitigated at least three distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack waves on various election-related sites in the Netherlands, as well as several political parties.

The internet company has shared information about two DDoS attacks occurring on June 5 and 6.

The first one peaked at 115 million requests per hour, with one site getting hit with 73,000 requests per second for four hours.

The second DDoS attack was a bit lighter, reaching 44 million requests per hour and peaking at 52,000 requests per second on one of the targets, once again targeting political sites in the Netherlands.

Cloudflare claims it thwarted both attempts to overwhelm and disrupt the targeted websites using its automated detection and mitigation services.

Russian "hacktivism"

On Telegram, the hacktivist group known as 'HackNeT' took responsibility for the attacks, announcing the victims as PVV (Party for Freedom) and FvD (Forum for Democracy). 

Strangely, both parties are right-wing nationalist movements that have previously expressed skepticism about the European Union and NATO's roles in international conflicts and have shown a rather sympathetic stance toward Russia, opposing the imposition of sanctions on the country.

This relatively new hacktivist group is not to be confused with the similarly named 'XAKNET,' which Mandiant linked to Sandworm hackers (APT44) earlier this year.

On June 1, 2024, Germany's Federal Ministry of the Interior and Home Affairs announced a "serious cyberattack" on CDU's (Christian Democratic Union) network, which they were working alongside the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution to investigate and mitigate.

The CDU has consistently condemned Russia's invasion of Ukraine and supports maintaining and intensifying sanctions until Russia  withdraws its forces from Ukrainian territory.

The German authorities did not share many details about that attack but informed all parties in the German Bundestag about how to protect themselves by ramping up all protective measures.