Massive cyberattack: Norwegian government's digital services paralyzed

A large-scale cyberattack has been affecting numerous public digital services in Norway since Monday. As the tech portal Bleeping Computer reports , the attack began on Monday morning at 3:38 AM CEST and targeted the infrastructure of the Norwegian Digitalization Agency, Digitaliseringsdirektoratet (Digdir). Digdir is a state agency that promotes and coordinates digitalization and information management in Norway. It manages the digital infrastructure of the Norwegian government, including login procedures for public services, electronic IDs, access to public documents, and data exchange between authorities.

In a statement released on Tuesday, Digdir announced that significant problems had occurred with a number of public IT services following a denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. This was the third such attack recently, following an attack in June and another on August 3rd. “This attack is two to three times larger than the last one we had, but we have largely managed to keep the systems running”, a spokesperson explained to the Norwegian news agency NTB .

On Tuesday afternoon, the authority announced that the systems were stable and that continuous work was being done to limit the consequences of the attack. As a result of the attack, which according to Digdir lasted more than 30 hours, connection interruptions, slow server responses, and unusually long login times could occur, it was stated. Services that rely on Digdir but are not directly affected also experienced disruptions. There are no indications that the attack led to a security breach or that personal data has fallen into the wrong hands, said Digdir Director Frode Danielsen. DDoS attacks are considered less serious compared to attacks where sensitive data is stolen.

So far, there has been no official attribution of the attack; however, Norwegian media are speculating possible Russian authorship. “It is most likely an attempt to weaken the trust that some people have in public services, as well as the trust that the public sector has high-quality and secure services”, explained Aristidis Kaloudis, Professor at the Department of Information Security and Communication Technology at NTNU in Gjøvik, to the Norwegian daily newspaper Verdens Gang . The investigation to identify those responsible will likely take a lot of time. Russia could be behind it, Kaloudis speculates, referring to the scale and resources required for such attacks. However, the attack could also be a ransom demand, according to Kaloudis. This is a common motive for DDoS attacks.

This article was originally published in German . It was translated with technical assistance and editorially reviewed before publication.