Finland’s National Bureau of Investigations (NBI) has joined forces with the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) to investigate a series of significant cyber attacks against state-run public services websites in the country in August.
The most serious targeted attacks left the national police service and other public websites inaccessible to users.
The NBI and the NCSC now plan to work more closely with public and private organisations to increase expertise and capability to better defend Finland’s critical IT infrastructure against cyber attacks.
Hackers launched a sustained denial-of-service (DoS) assault on a number of popular public websites on 21 August that caused serious disruption to server functionality, connectivity and public services.
The DoS strike was latest hostile cyber assault by hackers targeting high-profile public services websites in Finland. Previously, hackers had launched attacks against the City of Lahti’s municipal computer system and the IT system managing the official online results for the Finnish parliamentary elections in April.
The latest attack targeted the public service websites operated by Finnish police organisation Poliisi, the central tax administration bureau, Vero, the Finnish population register centre, the government’s online information portal, Suomi.fi, the social insurance institution Kela and the website of the Finnish Border Guard.
“This was a significant disruptive event,” said Juha Tretjakov, an IT security adviser at the ministry of transport and communications. “The first signs of disturbance were noticed late in the day on 21 August. For the most part, the organisations attacked were all able to restore a normal service the following day. There were some lingering prob ..
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