Image: AOP

The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) says that the weekend cyber attack targeted a Justice Ministry web service set up to provide election results, but not any systems related to actual voting or vote counts.

"The authorities are prepared for cyber crimes of this kind in connection with elections," said NBI Cyber Crime Centre Detective Chief Inspector Marko Leponen in a press release on Wednesday. "In general, attacks on public services are rather common, and services of current interest or those that get publicity are often tempting targets."

As of Wednesday, the NBI had no information on the origin of the attack or who may have launched it.

Director of Electoral Administration at the Ministry of Justice Arto Jääskeläinen told Yle that the denial-of-service attack took place in the early hours of Sunday morning. He described it as "brief" and "weak". Jääskeläinen added that the attack did not cause any serious problems.

Jääskeläinen declined to speculate on the source of the attack. It was first noted by routine monitoring by the government ICT centre.

"This kind of interference with government systems takes place from time to time," he pointed out.

Arto Jääskeläinen further told Yle that the Justice Ministry has no plans to upgrade system monitoring because of the incident.