In the beginning of September, a large-scale campaign of denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks took place in Estonia, aimed against twenty websites in various sectors; however, most targets remained unaffected.
The highest number of incidents took place on 4 September, when the websites of the Ministry of the Interior, the NATO Cyber Defence Centre (CCDCOE), the Centre for Defence and Security, Eesti Raudtee, the transport timetables of Tallinn, and Eesti Energia were targeted, for example.
The impact of the incidents was small because most of the essential web pages have implemented additional security measures by now. A few websites remained down for a short period of time, however. The attack against the pilet.ee public transport ticket selling environment around 20 September had the greatest impact. RIA also published a threat assessment about the denial-of-service attacks and the defacement of web pages in September.
In addition, the beginning of the school year brought along denial-of-service attacks against educational institutions and education information systems. On 13 September, a school in Harju County was hit by a DDoS attack; however, it had no effect. In the morning of 18 September, the information systems Moodle and Tahvel were attacked, and during the incident, the use of the websites was disrupted.
The RIA believe that students of the schools were probably behind the incidents, not wanting to take a test, for example. Most of the attacks take place during lessons and have a small impact; however, they do succeed occasionally in disrupting the work of an information system for a short time or slowing down the speed of the Internet connection at a school.
Unfortunately, various phishing incidents also continue, as a result of which people lose significant amounts of money. The majority of the reports submitted to RIA once again concerned phishing letters and messages sent on behalf of postal and courier undertakings. Most of the phishing messages claim that a package is about to arrive and direct users to pay a customs duty or a delivery fee. Often, the email refers to a small amount, such as 1.99 euros, but after the user enters their bank account data to the phishing page, hundreds or even thousands of euros are often reserved on the bank card.
The monthly summary also includes an overview of the attacks of hacker groups with links to the Russian government against Ukraine, which became more active again in September. Among other things, the hackers attempted to gain access to Ukrainian energy undertakings and used new malware to attack the smart devices of servicemen, while law enforcement agencies were also targeted. According to the Ukrainian authorities, they managed to repel the attacks.
