Turkish hackers hit Austrian parliament in cyber attack

AUSTRIAN officials say the country’s parliament was the target of a hacker attack on the weekend, and a Turkish group has claimed responsibility.

Parliament spokeswoman Susanna Enk says parliament’s web page was down for about 20 minutes on Sunday but there was no loss of data.

She identified the hackers as Aslan Neferler Tim, a group she said also claimed to be behind cyberattacks last year on the foreign and defence ministries.

A Facebook entry on the group’s site posted on Sunday reads: “Our response to Austria’s racism against Muslims will be stiff!!! (Parliament down.)”

Bilateral relations are tense over strong Austrian criticism of Turkey’s human-rights record, Austria’s opposition to EU membership for Ankara and Turkish complaints that Austria discriminates against Muslims.

Authorities are investigating the attack, the parliament said.

“The hacker attack was most likely a so-called DDoS-attack; a similar attack took place last November targeting the websites of the Foreign Affairs and Defence Ministries,” it said, using the acronym for Distributed Denial of Service attack.

In November, hackers launched a DDoS-attack, among the most common cyber threats, on the European Commission’s computers.

The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (Osce) in Vienna was also recently the target of a cyber attack. – AP and Reuters