It has been revealed that Italian authorities derailed efforts by pro-Russian cybercriminals to disrupt the Eurovision song contest.
Throughout both the performances and voting rounds, police were mobilised to block attacks on network infrastructure – Reuters reports that the attacks have been attributed to the Russian “Killnet” group and its affiliate “Legion”.
Several Italian institutions were attacked in the week leading up to the contest, including the upper house of parliament, the National Health Institute (ISS) and the Automobile Club d’Italia.
It is as yet unclear whether the attacks were traditional distributed denial of service (DDoS) attempts or web defacements.