“Trooping the Colour 2023 (24)” by Katie Chan is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
The official British royal family website, Royal.uk, faced a 90-minute distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack this past Sunday, October 1st. The attack flooded the site with traffic, rendering it inaccessible for a period of time.
While the Russia-linked hacker group KillNet has claimed responsibility, their involvement remains unconfirmed as of now. This incident has sparked security concerns given Royal.uk’s high-profile nature as an information hub for the royal family.
The attack on Royal.uk comes just 10 days after King Charles condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine before the French Senate. With geopolitical tensions still running high, cyber attacks on prominent sites could potentially increase.
What You Need To Know
Attacks like these highlight the need for robust DDoS mitigation strategies and website resilience against traffic floods. When sites go down, even briefly, it causes disruption and affects user access. That’s why preparation is key. Experts recommend measures like implementing web application firewalls, conducting load and stress testing, having an incident response plan in place, monitoring traffic spikes, and keeping software patched.
While no unauthorized access occurred in this incident, DDoS attacks aim to make sites inaccessible – not breach sensitive systems or data. As a precaution after the outage, Cloudflare checks were implemented on Royal.uk to block automated bots and protect IP addresses.
While attribution has yet to be verified, security experts say the attack fits Killnet’s pattern of launching less damaging denial-of-service attacks against orgs located in Ukraine and NATO countries.
Royal.uk was previously targeted by a suspected DoS attack over a decade ago in April 2011, during Prince William’s wedding live stream.
Go Deeper —> Royal Family website hit by cyber attack – Independent
