The pro-Russian hacker group Server Killers claims to be behind an attack on the Norwegian Directorate of Immigration (UDI).

The report was first published by Dagbladet.

– Our websites are currently down. Everything indicates that this is a cyberattack. We are working to restore the website, UDI senior press adviser Gustav Try told the newspaper.

According to the newspaper, the hacker group also claimed earlier this week that it had carried out DDoS attacks, or distributed denial-of-service attacks, against several Norwegian universities and higher education institutions.

A DDoS attack involves overwhelming a website or server with a huge number of requests from multiple devices, preventing legitimate users from accessing the service.

In August, Server Killers declared “cyberwar” on Norway, citing Norway’s support for Ukraine and a new agreement on cooperation in the fields of defence and security.

The Feide systems are also down on Friday following a denial-of-service attack, Khrono reports. Feide is a national system for secure login and data sharing, used, among others, by upper secondary schools and higher education institutions.

It is not known whether Server Killers is behind the attack on Feide. However, the method used – a DDoS attack – is the same.

(NTB)

Norway has been dealing with cyberattacks for some time

At 3:38 a.m. on Monday, August 24, a major DDoS attack began targeting systems operated by the Norwegian Agency for Digitalisation (Digdir).

The problems affected ten public services, including ID-porten, MinID, Altinn and eInnsyn. The attack continued intermittently for almost three days and ended only at around 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday.

It was already the third attack on Digdir’s systems within a short period, and according to some assessments, the largest so far.

Despite the enormous volume of traffic, most of the systems remained operational.

Pro-Russian group declared “cyberwar” on Norway

The previous attack on Digdir was claimed by the pro-Russian hacker group Server Killers. The group announced on Telegram that it was launching a “cyberwar against Norway.”

It cited Norway’s support for Ukraine and a new agreement on security and defence cooperation, signed on August 23, as the reasons.

Server Killers has been active since at least 2023 and has previously claimed responsibility for similar attacks, including against websites in Romania and Canada.

Norway’s National Criminal Investigation Service (Kripos) is investigating the DDoS attacks, while the Police Security Service (PST) and the Norwegian National Security Authority (NSM) are monitoring the situation.