Nine Danish hospital websites suffer cyberattack from ‘Anonymous Sudan’

The websites of nine leading hospitals in Denmark went offline on Sunday following distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks from a hacker group, Anonymous Sudan.

Copenhagen’s health authority stated on Twitter that even though the hospitals’ websites were down, the attacks had no impact on the facilities’ ability to provide medical care. After a few hours, it added, the sites were back online.

The hacker collective asserted on Telegram that the denial-of-service attacks were launched in retaliation for Rasmus Paludan, a far-right Swedish-Danish politician, burning the Quran in front of a mosque in Denmark in January. Additionally, the hacker collective warned that more hospitals would soon come under attack.

The websites that underwent cyberattacks included regionh.dk, bispebjerhospital.dk, bornholmshospital.dk, amagerhospital.dk, frederiksberghospital.dk, rigshospitalet.dk, gentoftehospital.dk, herlevhospital.dk, and andhvidovrehospital.dk.

Although the group claims to be from Sudan, local cybersecurity experts have doubts about the integrity of that claim. In a report released a week ago, the Swedish cybersecurity company TrueSec stated that, contrary to its claim, it is almost certain that Anonymous Sudan is a Russian hacker collective associated with the Russian government.

The company provided evidence to support its claim by noting that the group operates its official Telegram account from Russia, uses both Russian and English in its communications, and that well-known accounts in the Russian hacker community publicize its messages.