Cyber Incident Victim: Finnish Police
Date:
Mar 2015
Location:
Finland
Summary
The Finnish Police website experienced repeated denial of service attacks over a week, disrupting access during three separate incidents, including one prolonged outage lasting several hours. While the attacks caused intermittent downtime, they did not significantly impair the site's online services or prompt extraordinary security measures. The organization filed an investigation request with the National Bureau of Investigation to determine the source and nature of the cyber attacks.
| CIA Posture | Motives | Tactics, Techniques & Procedures |
|---|---|---|
| Available to members | 2 motives | 1 technique |
| Threat Actors | Type | Location |
|---|---|---|
| 0 actors | Available to members | Available to members |
Description
The Finnish Police website, poliisi.fi, experienced a series of three distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks over consecutive days in March 2015. The first attack occurred on Tuesday, disrupting access to the website from late morning until approximately 7:00 PM local time. This initial incident marked the beginning of a pattern of cyber disruptions targeting the police digital infrastructure. A second, smaller-scale attack followed on Wednesday, though the article does not specify its exact duration or precise timing. The third and most recent attack took place on Thursday morning, causing another multi-hour service outage that prevented public access to the website. These coordinated attacks represented an escalating pattern of interference with the police's online presence during this period.
Despite the repeated disruptions, the attacks did not compromise any underlying systems or data integrity. Tomi Moilanen, Chief Information Security Officer for the National Police Board, confirmed that the attacks had not forced the implementation of extraordinary security measures beyond standard protocols. The various online services hosted on poliisi.fi remained operational throughout the incidents, with no reported degradation of functionality for critical services. In response to the attacks, the National Police Board formally requested investigative assistance from Finland's National Bureau of Investigation to identify the perpetrators and methods behind the cyber assaults. The police organization maintained normal operational procedures while the technical disruptions were contained to the public-facing website component.