Prince of Wales
Revenge for British missile delivery: Prince William is targeted by Russian hackers
The Prince of Wales’s website is under attack by Russian hackers. So far she’s holding up.
© Alastair Grant / Getty Images
The pro-Russian hacker group “Killnet” reports attacks on British websites on Telegram. The attackers also have their sights set on the Prince of Wales – but work amateurishly.
“Today the website isn’t working. Maybe that’s because the UK is supplying Ukraine with high-precision guided missiles!” – with this message, pro-Russian hackers from “Killnet” recently claimed responsibility for an attack on the Website of Prince William and Princess Kate. In fact, the prince’s side could not be reached for a short time before security mechanisms were activated within a very short time that effectively fended off virtual attacks such as those coming from Russia.
The prince’s website was only briefly disrupted
The “hack” was a so-called “DDoS attack”. You flood a website or server with so many requests that the target collapses under the load. This form of disruption is considered a very simple form of attack, usually very easy to defend against. Data or secret information is generally not captured by a “DDos”.
The effect lasted for a correspondingly short time and the prince’s homepage was quickly accessible again. All that remains of the short interruption is an upstream security query to prevent mass access from one source.
The cyber attacks are attributed to “Killnet”, a hacker collective that has been active since the beginning of the year and threw itself into the cyber war on behalf of Russia. In the digital letter of responsibility, the group noted that it had also paralyzed “all medical institutions, government services and online services”. “Computerweekly” reports that not a single website that might fit that description has been offline since the hackers announced.
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The same applies to the website of the London Stock Exchange, the Army and “Bacs”, a system responsible for clearing and processing automated direct debits. The hackers also wanted to disconnect these services from the network – but they are all still accessible.
Hackers with comparatively little success
“Killnet” has made a name for itself with attacks on the West since the beginning of the year, but mostly failed due to the corresponding protective measures taken by the other side. For example, the hackers did not succeed in interrupting the transmission of the Eurovision Song Contest in May or disrupting the operations of the American defense company Lockheed Martin in August.
The group achieved success with attacks on Lithuanian websites. At the end of June, numerous government agencies in the country were paralyzed (read more here). Most recently, the hackers took the websites of American airlines offline in October – again with a “DDos attack”.