BERLIN (Reuters) – Russian hackers took a number of German web sites offline on Wednesday in response to Berlin’s choice to ship tanks to Ukraine, though Germany’s cyber company BSI stated the digital blitz had no impact. had little tangible impact.

Germany stated on Wednesday it will provide its Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, overcoming fears over the cargo of heavy weapons that Kyiv sees as essential to defeating the Russian invasion however which Moscow sees as a harmful provocation .

Hacking group Killnet stated it was focusing on authorities web sites, banks and airports with a coordinated distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) marketing campaign, a comparatively unsophisticated assault that works by directing excessive volumes of web visitors to focused servers in an effort to take them offline.

“At the moment, some web sites are usually not accessible. There are at the moment no indications of direct results on the respective service and, in line with the evaluation of the BSI, these are to not be anticipated if the same old protecting measures are taken,” the BSI stated in a press release. .

Some monetary sector targets had been additionally affected, the assertion added.

Killnet is a self-proclaimed Russian “hacktivist” group that has actively focused opponents of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

In June, the group claimed accountability for a DDoS assault on the Lithuanian authorities after the Baltic nation blocked the circulate of products to Russia’s Kaliningrad area.

US cybersecurity agency Mandiant beforehand reported that Killnet was related to one other Russian hacktivist group, Xaknet, which claims to have breached quite a few Ukrainian organizations.

Xaknet is probably going related to Russian intelligence companies, Mandiant stated.

Western officers say the Russian authorities is a world chief in hacking and makes use of cyber espionage in opposition to overseas governments and industries to hunt aggressive benefit. Nevertheless, Moscow has at all times denied finishing up hacking operations.

“We do not know what (Killnet) is. We sincerely surprise why a bunch of hackers is related to Russia and never with one other European nation,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated on Wednesday. of a routine briefing.