A Russian-speaking hacker group known as Killnet has claimed responsibility for at least some of the hacks, saying it is revenge for Lithuania blocking the delivery of some goods to the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, which is sandwiched between Lithuania and Poland.
Monday’s cyberattacks targeted part of Lithuania’s secure data transfer network, a communications network for government officials built to withstand war and other crises, according to the defense ministry.
“Some users of the secure national data transfer network have not had access to the services, work is underway to restore it to normal,” said a statement from the Lithuanian National Cybersecurity Center (NKSC) in a statement issued by the Ministry of Defense. .
“It is very likely that similar, or even more, intense attacks will continue in the coming days, especially against the communications, energy and financial sectors,” NKSC acting director Jonas Skardinskas said in a statement.
The type of hacking in question is known as a distributed denial-of-service attack that floods websites with fake traffic to get them offline. This is a common tool preferred by “hacktivists” such as Killnet – suspected non-state actors who carry out cyberattacks for political causes.
Following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February, a group of pro-Ukrainian and pro-Russian hacker groups disrupted a number of organizations in Ukraine and Russia. A group known as the Belarusian Cyber Partisans, for example, said it had hacked into IT systems that support trains carrying Russian troops near the Ukrainian front line.
Lithuania is a member of NATO, an alliance of 30 countries that includes the United States, which has been on the lookout for pro-Russian hacks for months. CNN requested a comment from NATO on the hacking incidents on Monday.
CNN’s Stephanie Hallas contributed to this report.
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