KillNet launches DDoS attack against UK royal family

Russian hacktivist group KillNet allegedly launched a distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attack launched against royal.uk, the official website for the United Kingdom’s royal family took the site offline.

The attack was launched on October 1 and saw the site go offline for around 90 minutes. Once the site was functional again, a Cloudflare IP address checker was put in place to ensure those accessing the site were not automated bots.

Responsibility for the DDoS attack was claimed by Russian hacktivist group KillNet via a post on social media site Telegram. KillNet has been responsible for DDoS attacks launched against the governments, critical infrastructures and private companied of countries including Germany, Italy and Romania, among others.

In the Telegram post about the cyber attack, KillNet claimed that the attack was launched as part of an “attack on pedophiles”. It is thought that this is referencing It is thought that this is a reference to the allegations of sexual abuse of a minor made against Prince Andrew, Duke of York.

It has not yet been confirmed if KillNet were responsible for the attack.

KillNet attack launched against NATO

In February of this year, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was been the victim of a series of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, causing temporary disruption to some of its sites. 

The DDoS attacks were linked to Killnet following Telegram posts by the hacktivist gang claimed that they were planning to launch cyber attacks against NATO. The group also appeared to be asking for cryptocurrency donations to launch further attacks. 

Jens Stolberg, secretary general of NATO, said that protective measures had been deployed in response to the attack.

Stolberg noted that NATO’s classified networks, which are used to communicate within its command structure and on active missions, were not affected by the DDoS attack. He also said that “the majority of NATO websites were functioning as normal” and that the organization’s technical teams were “working to restore full access”.

Despite Stolberg’s assurances that the network was not affected, it was reported that communications between NATO and its Strategic Airlift Capability (SAC) were affected by the attack.

At the time of the attacks, the SAC was in use as part of NATO’s response to the magnitude 7.8 earthquake that hit Syria and Turkey on 6 February and its subsequent aftershocks. Although SAC’s ability to communicate with an aircraft used to fly search and rescue teams and their equipment to an airbase in Turkey was allegedly impacted by the attack, the SAC did not fully lose contact with the plane.