Killnet

KillNet Team, also known as Killnet, is a pro‑Russian hacktivist group headquartered in Russia. The group’s primary activity consists of launching distributed denial‑of‑service (DDoS) attacks against online targets. These attacks typically generate high‑volume requests at the OSI layer 7, overwhelming web applications and causing temporary unavailability of services. Killnet often leverages compromised foreign infrastructure to amplify the traffic volume of its campaigns. The group publicly claims responsibility for its operations and frames them as retaliation for perceived geopolitical actions. A recurring motive cited by Killnet is opposition to countries that provide military or political support to Ukraine.

On 28 April 2022 Killnet carried out a DDoS assault on multiple Romanian government and affiliated websites, including the official government portal, the defence ministry, the border police, the national railway company and a commercial bank. The attack flooded the targeted sites with layer 7 traffic, rendering them inaccessible for several hours before mitigation efforts restored normal operation. Romania’s national cybersecurity agency, working with intelligence services, traced the traffic to compromised infrastructure abroad and attributed the incident to Killnet. A second recorded incident occurred on 22 May 2022, as indicated by a Twitter source, though public details of that event are not supplied in the available material. These episodes illustrate Killnet’s pattern of targeting nations that aid Ukraine, using DDoS as its principal tool of protest. No explicit information regarding the group’s size, organisational structure, ownership or parent‑subsidiary relationships is provided in the source material.