Irish government websites temporarily offline due to cyber attack

In the space of a week, Irish websites have found themselves inundated with distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks that, at time of publication today (22 January), sees a number of Irish Government websites down.

A range of Government websites were shut down for up to 12 hours in the latest in a series of cyber attacks.

“These attacks have resulted in periodic disruption that has resulted in a number of Government websites becoming unavailable to the public”, a spokeswoman said.

The attacks come just days after Ireland’s National Lottery website and ticket machines – and online forum site boards.ie – were also knocked offline by DDoS attacks.

The website of mobile phone company Meteor was also affected, reports the national broadcaster RTÉ.

The websites of HSE, the Department of Justice, the Courts Service, the Department of Defence and the Central Statistics Office were all down on Friday morning.

“As with all DDoS attacks, it is not possible to identify the exact source of the attack”, a spokesperson for the Office of Public Expenditure and Reform told The Journal.

In recent months, DDoS attacks have been used by hacktivist groups to pressure targets on social and political issues, as well as cyber extortion groups who demand payment in return for halting DDoS attacks.

It is thought they were targeted by DDos attacks, where sites are overwhelmed with traffic.

“Motivations can include political, or “hacktivism”, or fraud”, he said.