European Parliament declares Russia a terrorism sponsor, then its site goes down

Enlarge / An iteration of what happens when your site gets shut down by a DDoS attack.

The European Parliament website was knocked offline for several hours on Wednesday by a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack that started shortly after the governing body voted to declare the Russian government a state sponsor of terrorism.

European Parliament President Roberta Metsola confirmed the attack on Wednesday afternoon European time, while the site was still down. “A pro-Kremlin group has claimed responsibility,” she wrote on Twitter. “Our IT experts are pushing back against it & protecting our systems. This, after we proclaimed Russia as a State-sponsor of terrorism.”

While this post was being reported and written, the website became available again and appeared to work normally.