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A poster at the Swedish Psychological Defence Agency in Solna, Sweden.

A poster at the Swedish Psychological Defence Agency in Solna, Sweden.

Photographer: Erika Gerdemark/Bloomberg
Technology
Cybersecurity

Posing as Islamists, Russian Hackers Take Aim at Sweden

A series of coordinated cyberattacks intended to jeopardize the Nordic country’s chances of joining NATO have been disrupting its biggest companies

Since February, a mysterious hacker group calling itself Anonymous Sudan has targeted dozens of Swedish airports, hospitals and banks with distributed denial-of-service attacks, ostensibly in response to the burning of a Koran in front of the Turkish embassy in Stockholm earlier this year.

The so-called DDoS attacks, which push websites and services offline by overwhelming them with internet traffic, disrupted online programming at Sweden’s national public broadcaster and knocked out the websites of Scandinavian Airlines, state-owned power company Vattenfall, and defense firm Saab AB. Extensive media coverage has made the attacks — and Anonymous Sudan’s claims — a matter of public debate in Sweden.