The effects of the attack are said to be minimal.
A number of Irish state websites were targeted by cyber-attacks in recent days as votes were cast throughout the country for the local and European elections.
According to a report by The Sunday Times, the websites for Irish Rail, Bus Eireann, Transport for Ireland, the Houses of the Oireachtas, as well as the Leap Card app, and the voter registration portal Voter.ie were subjected to distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks in recent days.
A DDoS attack forces websites to go offline by overloading it with requests, disrupting its ability to function properly to legitimate requests.
The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) said it became aware of the attacks yesterday, Saturday, June 8, and that the effects were minimal.
Multiple Irish websites targeted by cyber-attacks during elections
A pro-Russian hacker group has claimed responsibility for the cyberattack on their social channel.
According to the report, the hackers claimed to have targeted four European countries where elections were taking place, including Ireland.
The websites were targeted in the hours leading up to the polls opening and on election day itself.
Voter.ie, one of the websites forced offline on Friday evening, is used to check whether or not a person in Dublin is registered to vote and also holds personal details of everyone on the electoral register in the capital’s four local authority districts, including addresses, nationalities, PPS numbers and Government IDs.
However, the report says that the hack was unsuccessful and designed purely to disrupt.
“These attacks are typically low-cost and low impact, aimed at attracting attention rather than causing significant harm,” the NCSC said.
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