Finland Government sites down due to DoS attack

Cyberattacks took down Finnish government websites while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed Finland’s members of parliament.

Denial-of-service attacks hit Finland’s ministries of Defense and Foreign Affairs’ websites around noon local time. About an hour later, both government agencies tweeted that the websites were back up and running.

Before the cyberattacks, it was stated that a Russian passenger jet was suspected of violating Finnish airspace. The apparent incursion by the IL-96-300 aircraft occurred off the coast of the Gulf of Finland near the city of Porvoo and lasted about three minutes, according to the Ministry of Defense. 

The aggressive cyber and airspace violations come as Finland, which shares an 830-mile border with Russia, is expected to submit an application to join NATO. Finland has traditionally been neutral, while maintaining mandatory national military service for men, but has been moving closer to NATO in recent months.

Russia, has strongly opposed the proposal, and a Russian lawmaker this week warned that joining NATO would be a “strategic mistake” for the Nordic nation. Then again, Russia has a lot of experience with strategic mistakes in Finland, not to mention the ongoing situation in Ukraine.

Finland has not blamed Russia for taking the websites offline during Zelenskyy’s address to its Parliament.