National Council election

Hacker attacks on political parties: Russians behind it?

(Bild: Family Veldman stock.adobe)

One week after hackers paralyzed the online presences of the ÖVP, SPÖ and KPÖ, there were renewed DDoS attacks on party websites today, the day of the National Council elections.

This time, the federal and provincial organizations of the ÖVP and NEOS were affected, as the parties confirmed on request on Sunday. Around half of the NEOS websites were down. DDoS attacks lead to outages due to network overload, but otherwise do not cause any damage.

Just a few days ago, there were DDoS attacks on the websites of ministries and public institutions such as the Department of Defense and the Court of Audit. Political parties and some state websites were also affected on Sunday, according to an inquiry on Sunday.

More attacks from Russia

Since Putin's invasion of Ukraine, therehas been an increase in cyber attacks, including DDoS attacks, which are believed to have originated in Russia.

In some cases, the Kremlin is using highly specialized hacking groups that work for the military and intelligence services. For example, they target the sensitive infrastructure of Western Ukraine allies and fish for state secrets. In the IT security world, such groups are known as APTs.

There are also independent hacker groups that do not hack directly for Putin's Kremlin, but can certainly be classified as "Russia-friendly" and therefore choose targets that would also be in the interests of the Kremlin. Conversely, Ukrainian or Ukraine-friendly Western hackers also repeatedly attack targets in Russia. They use their know-how for a form of activism.

"Attempt to weaken our democracy"
 The Ministry of the Interior has been registering attacks on the websites of ministries, administrative authorities, energy suppliers, public transport systems and political parties in Austria since mid-September. A connection with pro-Russian groups, which have been attacking the websites of Western nations with DDoS attacks on a daily basis since the beginning of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, is obvious. Due to the DDoS protection measures on many of the websites, the attacks only led to isolated outages, according to the ministry.

The holding of the National Council elections, which are held in Austria in analog form, is not threatened by the cyber attacks, the Ministry of the Interior has recently emphasized several times. The responsible organizational units of the ministry - including the NCSZ, Verfassungsschutz and GovCERT - are in any case involved.

The Tyrolean People's Party (ÖVP) stated in a press release that this was an attempt to "weaken our democracy. If the People's Party is thwarted in the final stages, this will only help the FPÖ and Herbert Kickl". All parties must condemn the cyber attacks.