Cyber Incident Victim: Donostia
Date:
Mar 2025
Location:
Spain
Summary
The municipal website of Donostia was taken offline by a coordinated cyberattack that also targeted other public administrations in the region. The outage lasted several hours, disrupting online services and prompting the extension of administrative deadlines, while the provincial council and neighboring towns reported similar issues that were resolved shortly after. Authorities confirmed the attack was neutralized and normal service restored across affected sites.
| 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
On Wednesday, March 5, 2025, the Ayuntamiento de Donostia observed an interruption in the availability of its municipal website and promptly reported the problem to its internal technical team. The disruption was not isolated; it formed part of a wider cyber incident that also affected the Ayuntamiento de Irún, the Ayuntamiento de Hondarribia, and the Diputación de Gipuzkoa, as indicated by subsequent statements from the regional authority. Municipal officials noted the anomaly during the morning hours and, upon detection, initiated communication with the Servicio Municipal de Informática to begin an assessment of the situation. The IT service commenced work immediately to identify the cause and to restore normal operation, following the same procedural steps employed by the other affected entities. No public communiqué from the Ayuntamiento de Donostia disclosed the precise moment when the issue was first recognized or the specific technical symptoms exhibited by the website.
Later in the day, the Diputación de Gipuzkoa confirmed that a cyberattack had been directed at several public administrations of the State and emphasized that the incident had been neutralized, describing it as an occurrence that happens routinely. According to the Diputación’s statement, the affected web pages, including that of Donostia, experienced a period of unavailability lasting less than five minutes before the automated control systems engaged and restored regular service. The control mechanisms functioned as intended, bringing the sites back online without the need for prolonged manual intervention. By the afternoon, the Ayuntamiento de Donostia’s municipal website had returned to full functionality, mirroring the recovery observed for the Diputación de Gipuzkoa and the Ayuntamiento de Hondarribia. The source material does not provide any indication of data loss, compromise of sensitive information, extension of the outage beyond the brief window, or any additional consequences stemming from the temporary website disruption.