Russian Killnet Hackers Attack Lithuanian Websites For Stopping Goods Transit After NATO Sanctions

JAKARTA - Websites belonging to the state and private parties in Lithuania were targeted for hacking on Monday, June 27 by Russian hackers. The hackers claimed the attack was in retaliation for Vilnius' decision to stop the transit of some goods under EU sanctions to the Kaliningrad exclave, an area geographically separated from Russia.

Lithuania's tax authorities said in a statement that they had suspended all activities due to a large number of attempts to connect to its system, even though all data was secure.

"The main targets are state institutions, transport agencies, media sites," said Lithuania's deputy defense minister, Margiris Abukevicius, as quoted by Reuters. This is another sign of worsening relations between the Baltic NATO member Lithuania and neighboring Russia due to Moscow's invasion of Ukraine in February.

Russian hacker group Killnet has claimed responsibility for what is known as distributed denial of service (DDoS).

"The attacks will continue until Lithuania lifts the blockade," a spokesman for Killnet said, as quoted by Reuters. "We have destroyed 1,652 web resources. And that's only so far."

Kaliningrad is sandwiched between EU and NATO members Poland and Lithuania and is supplied by rail via Lithuanian territory.

"Lithuania started seeing signs of an attack on June 21," Abukevicius said.

A spokesman for the Russian Security Council on June 22 promised retaliation for their blocked shipments of goods, stating that this would have a "serious negative impact on the population of Lithuania".

"It is very likely that attacks of the same or greater intensity will continue in the coming days, especially in the transport, energy and financial sectors," the Lithuanian National Center for Cybersecurity said in a statement. "Secure networks used by state agencies are also among those affected."

The EU's foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said last week that Lithuania was "only implementing EU sanctions" in stopping the transport of certain goods to Kaliningrad, and had not yet taken a unilateral decision.