Nis Faculty of Philosophy website hit by cyberattacks after court ruling

The website of the Faculty of Philosophy in Niš, Serbia, has been the target of at least five cyberattacks, some of which are ongoing, since an administrative court suspended a Ministry of Education decision. The suspended decision involved changes to faculty work permits and the elimination of three departments.

Milan Videnović, a research associate at the faculty, stated that the initial attack transformed the website into an online betting platform. Subsequent attacks have compromised official emails and hardware. Videnović detailed the scale of one coordinated attack, where antivirus software filtered approximately 17 million malicious data packets, suggesting the involvement of hundreds of compromised devices.

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To understand the scale of the latest incident, I will just state the fact that during a coordinated attack, the antivirus software filtered about 17 million malicious data packets. This means that the attack likely involved several hundred compromised devices.

These distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks work by opening a massive number of sessions, overwhelming the system's processor. Videnović questioned whether the series of attacks was coincidental or had a specific motive, hinting that the administrative court's decision might be the reason. He noted increased interest in information about the faculty's entrance exams and enrollment during this period.

In response to the website's unavailability, Videnović advised interested parties to seek information on the faculty's official social media accounts. The faculty had previously announced that the administrative court's temporary measure would preserve its legal and institutional status until a final court decision is reached, allowing all activities to proceed under normal conditions.

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Whether such a series of attacks is a coincidence or the attacks have some other goal and background, you be the judge. It seems that the decision of the Administrative Court 'hurts' quite a bit.