Computers, data, software, technology, virus, business, handshake – illustration photo
Prague – The servers of the Prague municipality were attacked by a Russian hacker group today due to support for Ukraine. Jiří Károly, director of one of the municipality's computer science departments, said this at the council meeting. Due to the attack in the morning, the website of the capital city and the online broadcast of today's council meeting did not work. Around 16:00, Károly stated that according to the analysis so far, all systems are functional.
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According to information from the municipality, it was a so-called DDoS attack, i.e. flooding the target servers with a large number of queries. According to Károly, the IP address of the attack was in Russia and Russian hackers had already signed up to it. “We are currently investigating which hacker group is behind the attack and are analyzing the attack technique,” he said before noon.
Around 4:00 p.m., Károly told deputies that the first attack took place between roughly 09:45 and 11:45 a.m., followed by another before 2:00 p.m. According to him, the municipality was still completing the final inspection and verification of all services and systems in the afternoon. “So far it looks like all the municipality's systems are functional,” he said. According to information from the municipality, the requested data was not leaked.
According to Prague Mayor Bohuslav Svoboda (ODS), two things became clear. “However, the digital threat coming from Russia is real and permanent. And above all, that we take cyber security very seriously at the Prague City Hall. Evidence can also be found in how quickly the systems were restored and that the subsequent attack was successfully eliminated,” he said .
The number of attacks by Russian hackers in the Czech Republic has increased since the Russian attack on Ukraine in February last year. In connection with the presidential elections, hackers attacked, among other things, the websites of the then-candidate and current president Petr Pavel, the Hlídač statu server or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Recently, for example, the website of Prague's integrated transport also faced a DDoS attack.
