UK Warns of Ongoing Russian Hacktivist Cyber Attacks
▼ Summary
– The UK government warns that Russian-aligned hacktivist groups are conducting disruptive DDoS attacks against UK critical infrastructure and local government.
– A key group, NoName057(16), uses a crowdsourced platform called DDoSia to carry out these attacks, which are ideologically motivated rather than for financial gain.
– An international law enforcement operation in July 2025 disrupted the group, but its main operators in Russia allowed it to resume activity.
– The NCSC provides mitigation advice, including strengthening upstream defenses, designing systems for rapid scaling, and having rehearsed response plans.
– These attacks, while often low in sophistication, can cause significant disruption and cost to organizations by taking services offline.
The United Kingdom’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has issued a stark warning regarding persistent cyber attacks from Russian-aligned hacktivist groups. These disruptive campaigns are primarily targeting critical national infrastructure and local government bodies with denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks designed to knock vital websites and digital services offline. While these attacks are often technically simple, their impact can be severe, leading to significant financial losses and operational downtime as organizations scramble to respond and recover.
A key group highlighted in the alert is the pro-Russian collective known as NoName057(16), which has been active since March 2022. This group operates the “DDoSia” project, a crowdsourced platform that recruits volunteers to contribute their computing power for coordinated attacks, often offering monetary rewards or community recognition in return. This model allows for widespread, distributed attacks that can be difficult to trace and mitigate.
Despite a significant international law enforcement action in mid-2025, codenamed “Operation Eastwood”, which led to arrests and server takedowns, the group’s core operators remain at large. Believed to be based in Russia, these individuals have quickly reconstituted the group’s activities, underscoring the challenge of disrupting ideologically motivated actors who are shielded from extradition. The NCSC emphasizes that this group is driven by political motives rather than financial gain, which makes their targeting patterns particularly concerning.
The threat is also evolving beyond traditional IT systems. These attacks are increasingly affecting operational technology (OT) environments, which manage industrial processes and physical infrastructure. This expansion poses a direct risk to essential services and industrial control systems. In response, the NCSC has published dedicated guidance for OT owners to help secure these critical assets.
To bolster defenses against these relentless DDoS campaigns, the NCSC provides a series of actionable recommendations for organizations. First, they must thoroughly understand their own digital services to pinpoint potential weak spots and clarify responsibility for defense. Strengthening upstream defenses is crucial; this includes leveraging protections from internet service providers, employing third-party DDoS mitigation services, and using content delivery networks (CDNs). Organizations are also advised to design their systems for resilience, incorporating features like cloud auto-scaling and maintaining spare capacity to handle sudden traffic surges.
Having a well-defined and regularly practiced incident response plan is another critical layer of defense. This plan should ensure that services can degrade gracefully during an attack, that administrative access is preserved, and that scalable fallback options exist for essential functions. Finally, continuous testing and monitoring are vital to detect attacks early and to regularly validate that defensive measures are performing as intended.
The rise of these Russian-aligned hacktivist groups represents a clear escalation in the cyber threat landscape since 2022. Their campaigns systematically target public and private sector organizations in NATO countries and other European nations that oppose Russian geopolitical actions, using disruptive cyber tactics as a form of political pressure.
(Source: Bleeping Computer)
