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Lithuania is enforcing sanctions against Russia on its border - the cyber attacks may be a retaliatory action by Russian hackers
Photo: VITALY NEVAR / REUTERS
According to the government there, Lithuania has been hit by a large-scale cyber attack.
"Lithuanian state institutions and private companies are exposed to severe DDoS attacks," the Defense Ministry said on Twitter on Monday.
The head of Lithuania's National Center for Cybersecurity, Jonas Skardinskas, said the attacks "probably" came from Russia.
However, Lithuanian officials said the worst attacks were quickly brought under control.
According to Skardinskas, there was no serious damage.
However, the national cyber security center warned of further attacks.
"It is very likely that attacks of similar or greater intensity will continue in the coming days, particularly against the transportation, energy and financial sectors," it said.
Russia had threatened Lithuania
In so-called DDos attacks - "Distributed Denial of Service" - servers are bombarded with so many requests that the system can no longer cope with the tasks.
As a result, the websites of the institutions concerned are often temporarily unavailable.
Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte said such attacks had increased since Russia's invasion of Ukraine began in late February.
The government in Moscow openly threatened Lithuania over the weekend over restrictions on rail transport between Russia and its Kaliningrad exclave.
The Russian hacker group Killnet, which had attacked government websites in the USA, Poland and Germany in the past, had threatened attacks on Lithuania in the Messenger service Telegram, explicitly referring to the situation in Kaliningrad.
In May, Killnet hackers launched cyber attacks on the websites of German security agencies, ministries and politicians, making them temporarily unavailable.
The attacks were directed against the Federal Police and the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) as well as against several state police authorities.
A detailed report on these Killnet attacks in May can be found here: Putin fans attack German official websites
oka / AFP / dpa
