Denmark has accused Russia of orchestrating two harmful cyber-attacks dubbed ‘destructive and disruptive’. The Danish Defence Intelligence Service revealed on Thursday that Moscow conducted a cyber-attack on a Danish water utility in 2024 and executed DDoS attacks on Danish websites prior to the municipal and regional council elections in November.
The cyber attack was attributed to the pro-Russian group Z-Pentest and another group, NoName057(16).
“The Russian state uses both groups as instruments of its hybrid war against the west,” DDIS said in a statement. “The aim is to create insecurity in the targeted countries and to punish those that support Ukraine. Russia’s cyber operations form part of a broader influence campaign intended to undermine western support for Ukraine.”
It added: “The DDIS assesses that the Danish elections were used as a platform to attract public attention – a pattern that has been observed in several other European elections.”
The director of the DDIS, Thomas Ahrenkiel, said they were “very certain that these are pro-Russian groups that have connections to the Russian state”.
Denmark’s defence minister, Troels Lund Poulsen, said the attacks were “completely unacceptable” and he was taking the incidents “very seriously”. In an attack on a water utility in Køge in December 2024, a hacker took control of a waterworks and changed the pressure in the pumps, resulting in three burst pipes.
“This is very clear evidence that we are now where the hybrid war we have been talking about is unfortunately taking place. It once again puts the spotlight on the situation we find ourselves in in Europe,” Lund Poulsen said.
The Danish foreign office would summon the Russian ambassador for a meeting, he said. “It is completely unacceptable that hybrid attacks are carried out in Denmark by the Russian side,.”
Although the attacks caused limited damage, the minister for resilience and preparedness, Torsten Schack Pedersen, said they showed that “there are forces capable of closing down important parts of our society”.
Denmark, he added, was not sufficiently equipped to withstand such attacks from Russia. “I think you have to be incredibly naive if you think we are at the top of cybersecurity.”
Souce: The Gurdian, fe-ddis.dk
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