Austrian parliament says Turkish hackers claim cyber-attack
VIENNA
Aslan Neferler Tim (ANT), or Lion Soldiers Team, whose website says it defends the homeland, Islam, the nation and flag, without any party political links, claimed the attack, a parliamentary spokeswoman said, Reuters reported.
Relations between Turkey and Austria soured last year after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan cracked down on dissent following a failed coup attempt in July 2016, and Vienna has since made a solo charge within the European Union for accession talks to be dropped.
On its Facebook page on the afternoon of Feb. 5, above a screenshot indicating the website was not loading, ANT said in Turkish: “Our reaction will be harsh in response to this racism of Austria against Muslims!!! (Parliament down).”
ANT says it has carried out “operations” against the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), the Austrian central bank and an Austrian airport.
An Interior Ministry spokesman said on Feb. 7 that an investigation had begun into the cyber-attack and, declining to elaborate further, noted that no data had been lost.
A parliamentary spokeswoman said: “ANT has claimed responsibility.” When asked if ANT was responsible, she said: “We assume so.”
The website was brought down after the server was flooded with service requests, a so-called DDoS-attack, similar to an attack last November that targeted the Foreign Affairs and Defense Ministries’ websites, a statement from parliament said.
DDoS attacks are among the most common cyber threats. One such attack targeted the European Commission’s computers in November last year.
The Vienna-based Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) was also recently the target of a cyber-attack.