Since Monday morning, the state’s Internet infrastructure has been the target of a malicious attack. From around 9:30am many web servers of state authorities and offices were down or difficult to reach.

At 10.50 am, the state-owned IT operator “Centre des Techniques de l’information de l’Etat” (CTIE) sent a message via Twitter saying the state network became a victim of a so-called “distributed denial of service attack” (DDoS).

This is a congestion of a web server which is achieved deliberately or due to a technical problem, with connection requests which lead to a blockage of the server.

The CTIE director confirmed the attack on Monday afternoon: “The attack is continuing and we are working with all the relevant services to repel it.”

Where the attack comes from and what its goal is, can not be said at the present time. However, the likelihood of a malicious intent being behind the attack is high.

Among other things, the “etat.lu” server – on which hundreds of web domains depend – was affected.