Czech Television hit in another wave of cyber attacks

More Czech websites have been hampered by another round of cyber attacks. The website of ČT24, the 24-hour of public broadcaster Czech Television, was inaccessible for several hours yesterday due to attacks, and Czech Radio's news server iRozhlas.cz was also out of operation, though the cause has not been confirmed. Russian hacker group Killnet, which was responsible for previous cyber attacks, earlier this week said they would target Czech media.

ČT24 was taken offline by a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, where perpetrators overload the targeted website server with so many requests that it has to shut down.

The attack began at 1:15 pm yesterday.

The cause of the outage at iRozhlas.cz, which went offline shortly before 7 pm, is not so clear yet. "We are inquiring into the causes. For now, we cannot rule any variants, including a cyber attack," Čro spokesman Jiří Hošna said.

Czech state institutions' websites have been repeatedly attacked in the past two weeks. The Russian hacker group Killnet claimed responsibility for those attacks but has not commented on whether or not they are responsible for the outages on the Czech Television (ČT) and Czech Radio (ČRo) sites.

These incidents follow cyber attacks earlier this week as well as last week. The websites of the Czech Interior Ministry, including the police and the fire departments, were offline on Wednesday, April 20, from the morning until around 2 pm. Problems were also faced by the website of the Czech Railways (ČD).

Several websites were hit with DDoS attacks last week on April 21 and 22, including the website of the Czech government and of the National Agency for Cyber and Information Security (NÚKIB). The Interior Ministry said no data had been leaked.

Killnet on April 28 stated that Czech media would be targeted with DDoS attacks unless the media stop referring to Killnet a pro-Kremlin group.

NÚKIB has repeatedly warned of an increased risk of cyber espionage and cyber attacks in connection with the war in Ukraine, which was invaded by Russia on Feb. 24. The Czech Republic has been supporting Ukraine with weaponry, including tanks. Russia has threatened to retaliate against the countries supporting Ukraine.