Web Attacks in Sweden

(Stockholm, Sweden) Authorities are in the dark about who caused two targeted DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attacks on media and police websites on Thursday. Shutdown of Swedish IT service provider Basefarm's client, Adeprimo, was a specific goal.

"Normally, a website with relatively high traffic will receive around 800 requests per second," said Basefarm CEO Sara Murby Forste in a statement. "During the attack on Adeprimo, we were registering around 400,000 requests per second," she added.

News websites affiliated with the Stampen media group, which uses Adeprimo's media platform, were among those hardest hit. These include main Gothenburg newspaper Göteborgs-Posten, whose site was inaccessible from early morning until lunchtime on Thursday.

Basefarm said it did not receive any warning or threat prior to the attack. The company is preparing to submit a report to the police and is continuing an internal investigation into the attack.

"We know from the nature of the attack that they possess a lot of knowledge. This took place in a planned manner, outside Europe, and with serious force," said Basefarm's technical manager Stefan Månsby.

"There is much to suggest that the traffic came from Asia and the United States. It could well be Asian, bouncing via the US."

A second attack later in the day knocked out the website of the Swedish police, which was down for a couple of hours hours in the late afternoon.

Police IT experts believe the two attacks are almost certainly linked.

Authorities continue to investigate.