This attack, however, was slightly different from the previous ones - the sites were explored before the attack, reports Latvian Television.
The main goal is to disrupt, security experts explain. The latest attack also attempted to make websites run slowly or become difficult to access and take longer to load. The goal is not to obtain publicly unavailable information, data or the like.
"In this case, it is the number of specific requests, for example, for the search field. If you make a lot of requests for the search field per second, then the entire website becomes slow or unavailable because of this search field," explained Baiba Kaškina, head of "Cert.LV", Latvia's dedicated cyberdefense agency.
The method is similar to previous ones – overload the system with connections from as many computers as possible.
Can we safely assume – as many do – that the attacks are carried out by Russia and Belarus? In a word, yes. Security experts in Latvia are investigating the attackers.
"There are hacktivists who very openly support Russian aggression and policy. The attacks are directly related to Latvia's aid to Ukraine," Kaškina said.
The Latvian State Radio and Television Center, which has the task of protecting the internet resources of the state administration, expressed a similar opinion.
"The attacks are mostly politically motivated. There are signs of centralized, paid attacks," revealed Vineta Sprugaine, representative of the Latvian State Radio and Television Center.
"In any case, after another aid package was awarded to Ukraine, this was quite expected. It was also the case in previous years – during various holidays, during political decisions, it is common practice," said Sprugaine.
Conducting a permanent defense is quite difficult. Sometimes we win, sometimes they win, Cert.lv admitted.
In general, hacktivists rarely manage to completely overload a website and make it inaccessible. In most cases, the attacks are pre-planned and take place over several days. Last week it was only a few days, but the record level was reached last year, when an attack continued for two months. Last year there were also more serious attempts to intervene, one of the examples being attempts to disrupt the manabalss.lv civil democracy website .
"Manabalss.lv was the target of intimidation, there were lies that it had been hacked, although it was not the case... so it was claimed that much more had been done than in reality," said Kaškina.
However, when Russia's invasion of Ukraine has been going on for a long time, "Cert.lv" points out that minnor website malfunctions and slightly longer loading times are a small price to pay for supporting Ukraine's fight for freedom.
