Turto Bankas (Property Bank), Lithuania’s centralised public property management company, was hit by a cyberattack on August 30, which briefly knocked out its external websites. The company believed it was a response to its “putinOut” campaign.
The websites turtas.lt and valstybesturtas.lt were down between 12:30 and 13:00 as a result of a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, Karolis Vaitkevicius, spokesman for Turto Bankas, reported.
The attack has been contained and the websites have been restored.
Vaitkevicius said, however, that the websites were now only accessible from Lithuania’s territory due to the measures used to contain the attack.
The cyberattack might have been carried out in response to the energy saving initiative “putinOut” that Turto Bankas announced on August 29, Vaitkevicius noted. The name of the initiative, aimed at cutting energy consumption by government institution offices, contains a reference to the Russian dictator Putin.
“We announced a national saving initiative “putinOut” yesterday and today we are hit with a cyberattack. We are not naive and don’t believe in coincidences. Given that the attack was carried out from abroad, we can deduce who stands behind it,” he added.
Many Lithuanian state institutions, private businesses and online media were hit by large-scale cyberattacks in late June and later in July. (LRT/Business World Magazine)