The European Parliament’s website was down for several hours on Wednesday after "Pro-Kremlin" hackers retaliated against Russia being designated as a state sponsor of terrorism, according to reports.
Earlier in the day, Reuters reported, European lawmakers voted in favor of declaring Russia a state sponsor of terrorism, saying the country’s use of military strikes on hospitals, schools and energy infrastructure violated international law.
The declaration is mainly symbolic because the European Union cannot enforce the declaration with a legal framework.
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After the vote, hackers took the European Parliament’s website down for several hours, Reuters said, with a distributed denial-of-service attack. The site was up again two hours later.
"The European Parliament is under a sophisticated cyberattack," European Parliament President Roberta Metsola said on Twitter. "A pro-Kremlin group has claimed responsibility. Our IT experts are pushing back against it [and] protecting our systems.
"This, after we proclaimed Russia as a State-sponsor of terrorism. My response: #SlavaUkraini," she added, which means Glory to Ukraine.
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A distributed denial-of-service attack is, "a malicious attempt to disrupt the normal traffic of a targeted server, service or network by overwhelming the target or its surrounding infrastructure with a flood of Internet traffic."
