Brussels: Europe and the Arabs
Belgian websites were subjected to a cyber attack this Thursday morning, including the website of Febelfin - the Belgian banking sector association - and the website of FPS Economy. The Belgian Cyber ​​Security Center (CCB) confirmed this. According to what was reported by the Brussels news sites, the Belgian News Agency said that for the fourth day in a row, the pro-Russian hacker group NoName057 has been carrying out cyber attacks on Belgian websites. At 9:08 am, cybercriminals posted a message on Telegram claiming to have attacked the Febelfin websites and the FPS Economy copyright declaration portal. The Belgian Cyber ​​Security Center confirmed the attack. Both the FPS Economy copyright portal and the Febelfin website are experiencing a malfunction and cannot be accessed. These are so-called DDoS attacks. The Belgian Cyber ​​Security Center added that the attacks are not serious.

In a DDoS attack, servers are "bombarded" with requests, causing them to be overloaded and inaccessible to real users. However, hackers cannot steal data in this way.

"There was indeed a DDoS attack on our website," said Isabelle Marchand, a spokeswoman for Febelfin. She stresses that it is not a hack: no data was stolen. "This is particularly annoying, but there are no security implications and our internal processes have not been disrupted. The website mainly contains information for the general public."

At 10.20 a.m., the group also reported that it was targeting the website of the German-speaking municipality of Sankt Veith and the municipality of Welkenraedt in the canton of Liège. The Welkenraedt website is currently offline.