A Russian hacker has claimed responsibility for an extraordinary attack on the royal family’s official website.
The site went down for more than 90 minutes early on Sunday (British time), with an infamous Russian hacker known only as KillMilk taking responsibility.
For almost two hours, the URL royal.uk – which normally provides information about the King and Queen, the wider family and its role in Britain and the Commonwealth – showed only a “gateway timeout” error message.
So-called “hacktivist” KillMilk posted to Telegram about what it said was an “attack on paedophiles”. The Telegram post added a sad face emoji with a picture of the King in the background.
KillMilk is the leader of the pro-Kremlin Russian hacktivist distributed-denial-of-service (DDOS) collective KillNet.
Earlier this year, KillMilk also used Telegram to announce the establishment of a private military hacking company called Black Skills. The name is believed to be inspired by private military companies in Russia – primarily the Wagner Group – which have been used during Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
KillNet has also launched DDOS campaigns against countries that have backed Ukraine since the Russian invasion in February last year.
DDOS attacks involve thousands of connection requests and packets being sent to a target server or website every minute, slowing down or even stopping vulnerable systems.
Such attacks don’t usually cause major damage but can lead to outages lasting several hours or even days. The collective has previously threatened to target organisations in healthcare and public health.
Sunday’s attack did not extend to the royal’s household system and the website was live again later on Sunday.
Buckingham Palace declined to comment.
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