Photo by Sebastian Elias Uth / Ritzau Scanpix / AFP) / Denmark OUT
On Thursday, the Danish government announced it would summon the Russian ambassador, accusing Russia of orchestrating two “destructive and disruptive” cyberattacks aimed at water systems and elections, one in 2024 and the other last month.
The Danish Defense Intelligence Service (DDIS) alleged on Thursday that Moscow had been responsible for a cyberattack on a Danish water utility in 2024 and a spate of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on Danish websites on the eve of elections last month, News.Az reports, citing foreign media.
The first was carried out by the Z-Pentest pro-Russian group and the second by the government-linked NoName057, according to the DDIS.
“We are very confident that these are pro-Russian groups linked to the Russian state,” said the director of the DDIS, Thomas Ahrenkiel, according to The Guardian.
The DDIS said in a statement that the groups were being used by Russia as “instruments” in its “hybrid war against the West,” which has also manifested in sabotage attacks, drone incursions and disinformation, among other tactics.
In the attack on a water utility in Køge last year, a Danish seaport, a hacker commanded control of a waterworks and altered the pressure in the pumps, causing three burst pipes.
Amid municipal and regional elections in November this year, the websites of political parties, municipalities, public institutions and a defense company were rendered inaccessible by a cyberattack operation.
“The aim is to create insecurity in the targeted countries and to punish those that support Ukraine,” the DDIS explained.
Denmark’s defence minister, Troels Lund Poulsen, described the “completely unacceptable” attacks as “very clear evidence that we are now where the hybrid war we have been talking about is unfortunately taking place.”
“It once again puts the spotlight on the situation we find ourselves in in Europe,” Lund Poulsen added.