Switzerland's federal administration hit by cyberattack

By Timo Kirez

GENEVA (AA) — Switzerland's federal administration was the target of a recent cyberattack, the country's Federal Department of Finance (FDF) said on Monday.

Federal officials quickly noticed the distributed denial of service, or DDoS, attack aimed at overwhelming several websites and applications and restored access to them, according to the online announcement by the Finance Department.

Responsibility for the cyberattack was claimed by a group known as "NoName," an outfit that was also behind an earlier attack uncovered last week on the Swiss parliament's website parlament.ch.

The Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland announced last week that it had opened criminal proceedings in connection with the attack on the homepage of the parliamentary services. The authority added that Monday's attacks were also subject to this investigation.

A DDoS attack overloads websites and applications with targeted requests, making them no longer accessible. Generally, however, no data is hijacked.