The sinister Russian hackers who claimed responsibility for crashing the Buckingham Palace website yesterday also previously made threats against the NHS and have launched cyber attacks on Eurovision and JPMorgan.
Pro-Putin hacktivists KillNet targeted the Royal Family yesterday morning – just days after King Charles condemned the invasion of Ukraine – with a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, flooding an online service with an overflow of fake users.
Hacker KillMilk, the purported leader of the hacking group, said in a Telegram post that they had attacked the Royal Family’s official website on Sunday.
The group are also threatened to shut down ventilators in NHS hospitals, in retaliation against a the arrest of a member, attacked the Eurovision song contest in an attempt to stop Ukraine winning, as well as US banking giant JPMorgan Chase.
After an alleged KillNet member, 23, was arrested in Tottenham, north London in May last year, after Romanian government websites were attacked, KillNet warned on Telegram: ‘If he is not released within 48 hours I will destroy your Romania, Great Britain and Moldova.’
Sinister Russian hackers KillNet claimed responsibility for crashing the Buckingham Palace (pictured) website yesterday morning
The pro-Putin hackers attacked the Eurovision song contest (pictured) last year in an attempt to stop Ukraine winning
The Killnet gang threatened to hit JPMorgan with a denial of service attack following its strikes against several US airport websites this week
The warning added: ‘I will destroy your entire information structure and even your Ministry of Health. All ventilators will be attacked.
‘Appropriate response. Only then will you begin to realise the mistake you have made.’
The pro-Russian hackers also tried to stop Ukraine winning last year’s Eurovision song contest with an attempt to crash the livestream of the final in Turin, and disrupting the public vote by using a bot army, The Times reported at the time.
The DDoS attack was announced by the group on their Telegram channel but Italy’s postal police ‘were ready and able to rebuff it’, the force said. The first attempt was made during the semi-final and peaked during Ukraine’s performance.
And during the final hackers tried to block the stream ‘all day’ but the ‘firewall held’.
The attempts to block support for Ukraine were in vein, as the nation’s folk-rap group Kalish Orchestra won the contest after mass support from viewers casting votes.
KillNet also targeted US banking giant JPMorgan Chase in October last year in an attempt to knock its websites offline, but the bank said that it shrugged off the assault with no ‘operational impact’.
The attack took down the Royal Family’s official website for roughly 90 minutes
Some visitors were redirected upon trying to access the Royal Family’s website
The website was taken down for several hours in a cyberattack
The Killnet gang threatened to hit JPMorgan with a denial of service attack following its strikes against several US airport websites this week.
However, a spokesperson for JPMorgan told DailyMail.com at the time that the bank is ‘aware of claims made by a threat actor group’ but that it has ‘not experienced operational impact from this situation.’
It was reported that the Royal Family’s website, royal.uk, was taken down for around 90 minutes, displaying an error message from around 10.20 on Sunday morning.
After the attack on the Buckingham Palace website on Sunday, a royal source said hackers had ‘not gained access to the Royal Family’s website’. ‘The website went down due to a Denial of Service attack for around an hour and a half. There was no access to our systems or content,’ they said.
The cyber attack came just two weeks after King Charles’s condemnation of Russia’s ‘unprovoked aggression’ was met with a standing ovation in Paris, as he declared ‘Ukraine must prevail’.
It is understood that an investigation into the cyber attack is underway.
KillMilk regularly posts on messaging site Telegram in support of the Russian state, and cyber security experts believe this group could have links with figures at the top of Putin‘s regime.
The Royal Family are vocal supporters of Ukraine, with the King hosting President Zelensky for talks at Buckingham Palace back in February
Prince William, who has himself served in the military, also visited Ukraine’s border with Poland this year to thank troops personally
The group claimed that the takedown was an ‘attack on paedophiles’. It also posted a picture of King Charles with the words ‘they killed our website’ next to it.
This isn’t the first time KillNet has gone after the Royal Family, as in November 2022 the website was taken down for several hours by a DDoS attack.
The Royal Family are vocal supporters of Ukraine, with the King hosting President Zelensky for talks at Buckingham Palace back in February.
Prince William, who has himself served in the military, also visited Ukraine’s border with Poland this year to thank troops personally.
His wife, Catherine Princess of Wales paid homage to the Ukrainian people with her performance at Eurovision and the royals have housed refugees who have fled due to the war.
KillNet is a pro-Russia group that is known for its attacks against government institutions and private companies across the world.
It is understood that the group formed around March 2022, and supported Russia and its invasion of Ukraine.
The Five Eyes intelligence network, made up of agencies from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the US and the UK, warned in April 2022 that KillNet was one of several hacker groups that had pledged to support Russia and threatened to attack anyone who attacked Russia or supported Ukraine.
KillNet is known for its Denial of Service (DoS) and Distributed Denial of Service (DDos) attacks.
These types of cyber-attacks intend to make servers and computers unavailable to intended users by disrupting the services of a host connected to a network.
Hackers perform DoS and DDoS attacks by flooding servers with requests, overwhelming them and making them unusable for a time.
Buckingham Palace declined to comment, but a royal source told MailOnline that the website was subject to a DoS attack, and its servers were not compromised.
The source added that the website was back up and running within two hours, but said that palace staff have not yet been able to identify the culprit.
Earlier this year Russian hackers took credit for taking the websites of two British airports offline.
Pro-Russia hacking collective UserSec posted in July that it had taken down the website for London City Airport
The hacking group UserSec also shared a post by Anonymous Russia in which it took responsibility for taking down Birmingham Airport’s website
Two hacker groups – UserSec and Anonymous Russia – claimed responsibility for outages at Birmingham Airport and London City Airport in July.
The collectives appeared to target the airports in retaliation for NATO’s support of Ukraine.
On its Telegram page UserSec, which has previously targeted Swedish airline SAS, wrote: ‘We decided to put one of the largest airports in the UK to sleep. Glory to Russia!’
It also shared a post by Anonymous Russia which said: ‘Anonymous Russia joins the attack on UK airports! Before your eyes, the sleeping international British airport Birmingham! Glory to Russia!’
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