Russian hacker group claims cyberattack against Sweden

- NoName057 says it targeted Swedish Privacy Protection Agency, Riksdagen’s government website

- ‘Right now, it can be difficult to reach parts of the Riksdag's website. we are working on solving the problem,’ message greets users at government's website

IZMIR, Türkiye

Pro-Russian hacker group, NoName057, said Tuesday it carried out targeted cyberattacks against Sweden.

"As part of a coordinated attack on Sweden, we have taken down two government websites in the Russophobic country," it said on Telegram. The group said it believes that it also shut down the Swedish Competition Authority's website.

Several agencies have reported technical problems.

"We have been exposed to an overload attack", Per Lovgren, spokesman for the Swedish Authority for Privacy Protection, IMY, told the Aftonbladet newspaper.

The agency has reported the incident to police but has no information on who is behind the attack, it said.

The Riksdagen's website of the government is completely blocked from abroad and difficult to access within Sweden.

"Right now, it can be difficult to reach parts of the Riksdag's website. we are working on solving the problem," is the message that greets users.

"We are looking into why the website is difficult to reach, but right now we don't know what is the reason," according to Lena Parkvall, spokesman for the Riksdag administration, in a statement to Aftonbladet.

Communications manager at the Swedish Competition Authority, Erika Svardh, told reporters: "We were warned that this could happen and then you can protect yourself in different ways, which we managed to do. Among other things, by shutting down access to websites from other countries. So our website is still up and running.”

The Financial Supervisory Authority also had problems during the day.

"Our website has been exposed to a load attack. But now it is available again," said spokesperson Karin Franck.

In an overload attack, a large amount of requests are sent to a website, making it difficult to handle the traffic.

It may result in the site becoming unavailable to users.