Cypriot authorities remain vigilant and closely monitor the situation, Deputy Minister for Research, Innovation and Digital Policy Nicodemos Damianou told CNA following a slew of cyberattacks against Cypriot targets associated with a hacker group called “Lulzsec Muslims.”

“We remain vigilant and we are closely monitoring the situation,” Damianou said without elaborating on the protective measures taken to fend off these attacks.

So far attacks have been launched in a bid to affect the websites of the Bank of Cyprus, of Hermes airports - the operator of Larnaca and Paphos international airports, the Cyprus Electricity Authority, Cyta - the state-owned telecom company, EKO - a fuel import company, while yesterday an attack was launched against the government portal, gov.cy utilising the distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) without causing any significant problems.

On his part, George Michaelides, Commissioner of Communications who heads the Digital Security Authority, refrained from commenting on the motives and targets of this hacker group, stating that such discussion “is not helpful.”

He added that the DSA is monitoring the comments and discussions made by the specific hacker group.

Michalides said the DDOS attack boosts traffic on a specific website with millions of requests which cannot be served pushing a website out of operation.

Stating that one could not wait for an attack to act in a preventative manner, Michaelides said “everybody should comply with and implement security rules.”

The DSA, he added, remains vigilant on a 24/7 basis and its operations have not changed.

Meanwhile, cybersecurity company Odyssey Cybersecurity called all organisations to make sure that all critical systems have incorporated the latest security updates and monitor network traffic for possible malicious activity and to prepare for possible DDoS attacks in collaboration with network providers through mitigation strategies.