Members of the European Union are currently participating in the European Parliament elections, which provides an excellent opportunity for hacktivists to launch Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks on political parties across the spectrum.
At the time of writing, 8 of the 27 EU members have finished counting their votes, with preliminary results and exit polls showing gains for right-wing parties.
Cloudflare says it has been involved in detecting and mitigating at least three DDoS attacks on political websites in the Netherlands, for which a pro-Russian cybercriminal group known as HackNeT has claimed responsibility.
Russia attacks shared interests
The HackNeT group has taken responsibility for attacks on two political parties in the Netherlands, the PVV (Party for Freedom) and the FvD (Forum for Democracy), both of which have expressed Euroscepticism, anti-NATO sentiment and opposition to the sanctions against the EU. Russia after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Cloudflare shared statistics on the impact of the DDoS attacks, with the initial attacks reaching 115 million requests per hour, with a sustained rate of 73,000 requests per second for four hours. The second attack only reached 44 million requests per hour, peaking at 53,000 requests per second.
European Parliament elections took place across the EU from June 6 to 9, with French President Emmanuel Macron calling early elections in response to gains made by far-right parties.
As election results continue to roll in, the euro has suffered a decline in value against the dollar and the pound, with European stock markets also hit by the uncertainty surrounding the French elections and the possibility that other countries could also call early elections.