Web portal of Government of Montenegro and several other web sites were under enhanced cyberattacks

Podgorica, Montenegro (17 February 2017) – Web portal of the Government of Montenegro (www.gov.me) and a number of state authorities' portals and subportals, as well as portals of some Montenegrin media were again on 16 and 17 February 2017 under series of cyberattacks, although the attacks were enhanced both in scope – portals of some Montenegrin media were under attack, as well as by type – in addition to DDoS attacks, TCP Flood and ICMP Flood attacks were launched.

The competent authorities in Montenegro, in cooperation with colleagues from partner countries, identified the services attacks originated from and they are working on locating and identifying the attackers. The public will be timely briefed.

Web portal of the Government of Montenegro was under this kind of cyberattacks on 16 October 2016. The attacks were repeated over the next few days.

The new series of attacks began on Wednesday, 15 February 2017 at 11:15. Constant attacks lasted until 19:30. The attacks were repeated on 16 February. This series of attacks was primarily focused on the portal of the Government of Montenegro as well as the system of protection of the Government's portal. This time the invaders applied so-called TCP Flood and ICMP Flood attacks, which didn't plague the link as in previous situations, but they sent the large data packets (1,000 packets per second) which made the individual services unavailable. At the same time the public DNS (Domain Name Server) was attacked. Attackers have changed the type of attack after the huge number of requests clogged the links.

The attacks have been rejected around 15:00.

On 17 February they launched the new series of attacks similar to those of previous days, given that the most attacks were quickly rejected and the system operated stably.
Since yesterday the attacks have also been aimed at state authorities' mail server, as well as the portals of some media in Montenegro.

The scope and diversity of the attacks and the fact that they are undertaken on the professional level indicates that this was planned and synchronised action. The fact that they attacked portals of the Government of Montenegro and state authorities, state authorities' mail servers, as well as individual Montenegrin media, as has been done on the day of parliamentary elections on 16 October 2016, casts doubt on the motives of the attacks aimed at disabling distribution of information to Montenegrin and international public.

PUBLIC RELATIONS SERVICE OF THE GOVERNMENT OF MONTENEGRO/ MINISTRY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION