Cyprus thwarted a digital attack against the government's main online portal

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NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — Cyprus said Sunday that it has successfully thwarted a digital attack aimed at blocking access to the government’s central online portal, the latest in a string of similar attacks over a three-day period against state-run utilities and the Cypriot subsidiary of a Greek energy company.

Cyprus’ Deputy Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digital Policy said in a statement that “a quick and coordinated response” by authorities foiled the attack, whose purpose was exclusively to prevent access to specific government websites.

The distributed denial-of-service attack, or DDoS, only affected the main government portal gov.cy “for a few minutes” and that no other online government ministry or service website was affected.

The deputy ministry didn’t say who was behind the attacks or what the possible motive may have been.

Sunday’s attack came after Cyprus’ electricity and telecommunications authorities, as well as the operator of the island nation’s two airports, Hermes and fuel company EKO Cyprus Ltd., were targeted on Friday and Saturday.

Officials told the Cyprus News Agency that all those attacks had also failed and that no client information had been leaked or compromised.