In Switzerland, Russian hackers attacked city and bank websites

Russian hackers attacked the canton of Schaffhausen in northern Switzerland and the cities of Geneva and Sierre, paralyzing their websites on Wednesday morning during the World Economic Forum in Davos.

This was reported by Swissinfo, Ukrinform reports.

Before noon, the canton of Schaffhausen announced that its website was back up and running after a so-called distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. Meanwhile, Informatik Schaffhausen was able to completely repel the attack thanks to cooperation with an external provider. The cyberattack did not affect the work of the cantonal administration.

On the morning of January 22, the electricity supplier in Schaffhausen, SH Power, also displayed an error message. Its website was back up and running by noon that day. Meanwhile, the websites of the cities of Sète and Geneva remained inaccessible.

On Tuesday, the cantonal banks of Zurich and Vaud were attacked, and the websites of several municipalities in Lucerne were paralyzed the day before.

The article says that the Swiss National Cybersecurity Center had anticipated cyberattacks during the WEF in Davos. DDoS attacks send websites and applications so many requests that they become inaccessible. In this case, the data is not lost.

The Russian hacker group «NoName» has claimed responsibility for the attacks on the Internet, the material says.