Over the weekend, multiple Romanian government websites, including those of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Constitutional Court, were subjected to distributed denial-of-service attacks orchestrated by the pro-Russian hacktivist group NoName057(16). The targeted sites experienced a sustained flood of traffic that rendered them inaccessible to legitimate users, disrupting access to official election information and public services during the crucial rerun of Romania's presidential election. The election rerun itself had been prompted by the nullification of the initial vote after evidence of Russian interference emerged. Despite the severity of the timing and the potential for undermining public trust in the electoral process, no data breach or information theft occurred. All impacted websites were swiftly restored to normal operations by the Romanian National Directorate for Cyber Security, minimizing long-term operational disruption. However, the incident caused temporary service outages, prevented citizens and international observers from obtaining timely updates, and highlighted the vulnerability of state infrastructure to geopolitically motivated cyber attacks. The example underscores the need for robust DDoS mitigation strategies to safeguard democratic processes and maintain continuity of critical online services. The rapid recovery also demonstrated the effectiveness of coordinated incident response efforts and the importance of continuous monitoring to detect and thwart DDoS threats before they can inflict more widespread disruptions.
Source: https://www.scworld.com/brief/romanian-websites-subjected-to-pro-russian-ddos-intrusions
TPRM report: https://scoringcyber.rankiteo.com/company/directoratul-national-de-securitate-cibernetica
"id": "dir522050725",
"linkid": "directoratul-national-de-securitate-cibernetica",
"type": "Cyber Attack",
"date": "5/2025",
"severity": "25",
"impact": "1",
"explanation": "Attack without any consequences"