The European Parliament suffered a large-scale DDoS attack by the Russian hacker group Killnet today after voting in favor of declaring Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism.

On Wednesday, the European Parliament passed a resolution that designates Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism, citing “the deliberate attacks and atrocities committed by Russian forces and their proxies against civilians in Ukraine, the destruction of civilian infrastructure and other serious violations of international and humanitarian law amount to acts of terror and constitute war crimes.” The resolution received overwhelming support, with 494 members voting in favor, 58 against and 44 abstaining.  

The European Parliament adopted a resolution recognizing the Russian Federation as a state sponsor of terrorism. pic.twitter.com/ykKetQnSfQ

— Michael MacKay @mhmck@mas.to (@mhmck) November 23, 2022

The resolution, however, has no legal framework to be enforced. With that, the Parliament has called on individual member states to add Russia to their terrorism sponsor lists, as well as designate Wagner Group, Chechen Kadyrovites, and other Russian-backed fighting groups as terrorist organizations.

Following the resolution, Killnet posted to its Telegram channel a Russian song called “Evil Empire” and that the group “Officially recognizes the European Parliament as sponsors of homosexuality! Strap-on shelling of the server part of the official website of the European Parliament!”

The @Europarl_EN is under a sophisticated cyberattack. A pro-Kremlin group has claimed responsibility.

Our IT experts are pushing back against it & protecting our systems.

This, after we proclaimed Russia as a State-sponsor of terrorism.

My response: #SlavaUkraini

— Roberta Metsola (@EP_President) November 23, 2022

Meanwhile, the European Parliament’s website suffered a sophisticated Distributed Denial of Service attack. Parliament President Roberta Metsola tweeted out that “The @Europarl_EN  is under a sophisticated cyberattack. A pro-Kremlin group has claimed responsibility. Our IT experts are pushing back against it & protecting our systems.” 

The website was restored after being down for several hours, in which Killnet posted “The President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, is celebrating the end of the 7 hour DDOS Attack. Against the backdrop of the president, the European Parliament’s network security department is dancing!”