The Russian "hacktivists" who attacked Swiss government websites last spring, notably around the time Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the Swiss parliament, were politically motivated, says the National Centre for Cyber Security (NCSC).
A first cyber attack in June followed a decision by the Senate on the Federal Law on War Materiel. The Senate wanted to authorise the re-export of war materiel purchased in Switzerland, subject to certain conditions. In response, Russian "hacktivists" launched a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack against the parliamentary website, with the aim of overloading it with requests and making it unavailable to users, the NCSC said on Thursday in its half-yearly report.
The trigger for a second attack in June was the announcement of Zelensky's virtual address to the Swiss parliament. The hackers broadened their targets: some sites of the federal administration, former federal agencies such as the Swiss Federal Railways and Swiss Post, major companies, banks, a number of airports and towns and cantons were hit on June 12 or the following days. ...