Municipal websites hit by cyber-attacks ahead of elections

A number of Belgian municipalities are dealing with cyber-attacks on their official websites in the run-up to this weekend's elections.

Nevertheless, “the electoral process is not under threat,” according to the Centre for Cyber Security Belgium (CCB).

A group of pro-Russian hackers is behind the attack, having published a list of targeted Belgian towns on their Telegram account.

The municipalities of Enghien, Comines-Warneton, Mouscron, Flobecq, Amblève, Colfontaine and Malmedy are among those affected.

“The connection to the site was very slow,” said Enghien mayor Olivier Saint-Amand.

Comines-Warneton mayor Alice Leeuwerck noted that visitors to their municipal website were met with an error message saying "there are too many requests at the moment".

The cyber-attacks are generally carried out using the DOS method, which consists of flooding servers with a very large number of requests, eventually paralysing them.

The server of IMIO, the intermunicipal company responsible for hosting the websites of the various communes, was also attacked.

“No information has been stolen, the hackers are just trying to overload the servers,” said director Frédéric Rasic.

“We are taking appropriate measures. We're blacklisting and preventing IP addresses from accessing our servers, but it's a long-term job. It may be a while yet.”

The CCB stressed that these attacks are not dangerous.

“This could temporarily block the publication of results if the sites are attacked again, but the various bodies responsible are prepared to deal with this situation,” explained spokesperson Michele Rignanese.

“These attacks have no impact on the administrative systems and even less on the electronic voting system, as the computers are not connected to the external network.”

Similar attacks had already been carried out this week against other websites of Belgian cities, ports and public authorities. These attacks were claimed by the same group of hackers.