Several high-profile attacks in Sweden and abroad – Swedish Dagbladet

the legal saga of Julian Assange is believed to have inspired a denial of service attack in October 2012. Photo: John Stillwell / TT

a DDoS attack (distributed denial of service) is a denial of service attack which uses multiple computers to attack the target. By sending a large amount of calls to the same goal increases the possibility to make the site unavailable.

The attacks often take place through so-called botnets, networks of computers hijacked and controlled remotely by using viruses or other programs. It then occurs in the background without the computer owner knowing.

In October 2012 hit among TT, the Swedish Armed Forces and several banks and authorities for the comprehensive denial of service attacks. It is unclear who was behind but there was speculation about the connection to the lawsuit against The Pirate Bay and the indictment against Wikileaksgrundaren Julian Assange.

During the holiday season in 2012 was attacked by several major Finnish newspaper sites, among other things, Iltalehti, Helsingin Sanomat and Ilta- Sanomat.

In April last year exposed the French broadcaster TV5 Monde for a hacker attack from supporters of jihadiströrelsen Islamic State (iS). It took several hours for the TV company to regain control of broadcasts and websites.

In October and November last year, Swedbank and Nordea subjected to DDOS attacks and lay down. In November, arrested a teenager in Vaxjo suspected of knocking out IT systems.

The British public service broadcaster the BBC’s online services, including its news site, was down for several hours on New Year’s Eve, after a large-scale denial of service.

Sources: TT, MSB