Filenews 17 May 2025 - by Fanis Makridis
Critical information infrastructures of the Republic of Cyprus have been put on alert since the middle of the week.
A group of hackers from Tunisia is alleged to have announced a strike against Cyprus on the "dark web" and on a well-known communication platform. In fact, what is advertised is that the strike will be "strong, massive and extensive".
The announcement on the dark web is accompanied by an invitation to other hackers to participate in the planned attack.
These hackers allegedly operate under the name "Tunisian Maskers Cyber Force". For the time being, there is no exact information about when they will launch the attack.
According to experts, who have reportedly evaluated and analyzed this information, the planned attack seems to most likely have political and/or religious purposes.
The type of attack
It is estimated that if the announcement is implemented, then the cyberattack will manifest itself with a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) network. For connoisseurs, it is one of the most prevalent types of cyberattacks, which aim to disrupt the operation of a network system or service.
Hackers in such cases send a huge volume of requests to a server or network, with the aim of either saturating the system, running out of resources (bandwidth, memory, CPU), or making the service unavailable to legitimate users.
In the case of Cyprus, if a government website receives, for example, one million requests (visits) per minute from various countries, then the server "crashes" and the website becomes inaccessible. Analysis of the traffic, i.e. the visitors of the website, shows an abnormal distribution of requests, which come from malware.
Although DDoS attacks, as described above, do not in themselves make it possible to intercept personal data and other valuable information, they can still be part of such malicious design.
More specifically, hackers may launch a DDoS attack to load or even drop a website, deceptively (distraction), with the aim of distracting security administrators and at the same time exploiting other vulnerabilities (π.χ. SQL injection, malware) to compromise systems and extract personal or financial data.
Blows in 2023
We remind you that in March 2023, cybersecurity on our island was tested by hackers. During that period, there were serious attacks on the University of Cyprus (2/3/2023), the Land Registry (9/3/2023) and the Open University of Cyprus (27/3/2023). The then director of the Land Registry had commented that there was a blow "to the lung of the Economy". A month later, the damage that had been done had not been repaired. Moreover, the Rector of the Open University of Cyprus had spoken of a "knife in the heart of the University", referring, among other things, to the fact that the "distance education platform", which plays a catalytic role, was out of operation.
Although for security reasons no information was ever publicly given about the extent of the hits, however, as "F" was informed at the time by a competent source, access was gained to files of some of the critical infrastructures that had been affected by the users of the malware at the time. In other words, personal information and other sensitive information had been leaked to some extent to the hackers. As it became known in the spring of 2023, the organizations that had been hit by the "hackers" had informed the Commissioner for Personal Data Protection about it.
Inform CSIRT-CY
As "F" is informed, the Digital Security Authority (PSA) has already taken actions in order to take preventive measures. The issue was assigned to the National CSIRT-CY, which is characterized as the technical and operational arm of the PSA for the prevention and management of cybersecurity incidents in the critical information infrastructures of the Republic of Cyprus, making recommendations on the precise preventive measures that should be taken. Sections of critical infrastructure have already been notified of the declared intentions of the Tunisian hackers. It should be noted that an allocation for the National CSIRT-CY is included in the annual budget, so that it can fulfil its objectives.
