A Russian hacking group attacked local government and presidential candidate websites on the day of Romania’s presidential election, the Romanian outlet G4Media reported.
The attack, carried out by the group known as DDOSIA/NoName057, targeted the website of Romania’s Constitutional Court, the main government portal, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the websites of four presidential candidates.
According to a list from the National Cybersecurity Directorate, the affected candidate websites included Crin Antonescu, who is backed by Romania’s ruling parties, and Bucharest Mayor Nicușor Dan, running as an independent.
The hackers claimed responsibility on their Telegram channel, naming the websites of the Interior and Justice Ministries among their targets, Romanian TV channel Digi24 reported. The attack used a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) method, which overwhelms a website with traffic to force it offline.
The cyberattack occurred as Romanians voted in the first round of a presidential rerun. The country’s highest court annulled the previous round last year following allegations of illegal campaigning by the winner, ultranationalist Călin Georgescu, and possible Russian interference.
According to declassified Romanian intelligence documents, more than 85,000 cyberattacks targeted Romania’s electoral IT system on and after last November’s vote.
