In Finland, the threat level of cyber security has continued to rise, says the state’s director of cyber security.
European the statement approved by the parliament about Russia as a state that supports terrorism has not caused a spike in cyber attacks on state administration or key infrastructure in Finland.
This is what the state cyber security director said Rauli Paananen on Friday at a press conference on Finland’s cyber security situation.
On Wednesday, the website of the European Parliament was attacked shortly after the adoption of the Parliament’s statement. According to an unnamed parliamentary source who spoke to Politico, it may have been the most technologically advanced cyber attack ever to target Parliament.
According to a member of the pirate party who spoke to Politico, it was a distributed denial of service attack, or DDoS attack, which has recently been used by the Russian hacker group Killnet to cause harm online. In an attack, the normal operation of a website or service is disrupted or prevented by drowning it in unnecessary data traffic.
“We have strong indications that it was Killnet, i.e. Hackers Linked to Russia,” a Greek MP told Politico Eva Kaili.
European Denial of service attacks that temporarily bring down websites or services like the one on the parliament get a lot of attention in the media, but the harm they cause is temporary at best, Paananen reminded at the press conference.
“They practically do not endanger information security in any way. Tens of thousands of denial-of-service attacks are carried out in Finland every year, but there are no visible effects because we are so well prepared for them,” said Paananen.
In Finland, the threat level of cyber security has continued to rise, Paananen said.
The Finnish Communications and Transport Agency Traficom raised the threat level in September in cooperation with the Finnish Security Police. According to the authorities, the threat of intelligence and influence on critical infrastructure has increased both in the physical world and in the cyber world.
Ransomware, phishing, and malicious communications targeting the government and organizations critical to security of supply have all increased.
At the press conference, Paananen particularly emphasized the vigilance of companies and citizens in that the information security updates of the devices are kept up to date.
“Software vulnerabilities are now exploited in attacks very quickly after the vulnerability has become apparent,” said Paananen.
Friday at the press conference, the head of the Service Safety Center’s unit Jarna Hartikainen emphasized that the telecommunications system is prepared for many types of disruptions, and traffic can always be routed elsewhere in the event of a single disruption.
“Several simultaneous deviations would be required to affect society’s functioning. The networks are monitored around the clock,” Hartikainen said.
According to Hartikainen, preparations for a difficult energy situation are well underway in Finland, but during the winter you may still have to rely on rotating power cuts.
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