Royal Family website crashes for 90 minutes, Russian hacker group KillNet takes credit

A Russian hacker has taken credit for allegedly taking down the Royal Family's official website in what has been characterized as a targeted attack.

The hacker's name is apparently KillMilk, the purported leader of the Russian hacktivist group known as KillNet. The group claimed in a Telegram post that they had carried out a virtual attack against the Royal Family's official website on Sunday, per the Daily Mail.

The group claimed that the incident was an "attack on paedophiles." They also posted a photo of King Charles with the words "they killed our website" beside it. It was reported that the Royal Family's official website, royal.uk, was not able to be reached for around 90 minutes. However, the site is active again.

This is not the first time KillNet has targeted the Royal Family. In November 2022, they reportedly took down the website for several hours in what was called a DDoS attack.

BlackBerry described the hacker group in the following way:

KillNet is a Russia-aligned hacktivist group that gained notoriety during the first month of the Russian-Ukraine conflict when they began a widespread—although relatively unsophisticated—campaign of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, political rhetoric, and misinformation. KillNet's self-proclaimed anti-war axiom states that their primary targets are supporters of Ukraine, including NATO countries and their allies. Although KillNet's ties to official Russian government organizations such as the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) or the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) are unconfirmed, the group is considered a threat to critical infrastructure by a multi-national joint cybersecurity advisory.

The Five Eyes intelligence network, which is comprised of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the U.K., and the U.S., cautioned in April 2022 that KillNet was just one of several hacker groups that had pledged support for Russia amid the war in Ukraine. The group threatened to attack anyone who targeted Russia or supported Ukraine, according to the report.

Two other hacker groups, UserSec and Anonymous Russia, took responsibility for creating outages at Birmingham Airport and London City Airport back in July. It is believed that the groups targeted the airports after NATO came out in support of Ukraine.

UserSec said on its Telegram page: "We decided to put one of the largest airports in the UK to sleep. Glory to Russia!"

The group also shared a post by Anonymous Russia, which said: "Anonymous Russia joins the attack on UK airports! Before your eyes, the sleeping international British airport Birmingham! Glory to Russia!"

It is uncertain what the hacker group's next target is.

Killnet Strikes Again: US Airports Hit by Cyber Attacks, and Russia Is the Top Suspectwww.youtube.com

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