Russian hackers take down royal family’s official website

A Russian group has claimed responsibility for a cyber attack on the royal family’s official website that led to a major outage.

Russian cyber criminals have claimed responsibility for a targeted attack on the royal family, after King Charles’s condemnation in Paris of the Ukraine war.

Hacktivist pro-Russian group KillNet said they brought down the royal.uk website for 90 minutes on Saturday morning prompting palace chiefs to deploy their cyber security experts to restore the site.

The site crashed when it was bombarded with activity. It’s thought the site went down shortly after 10.20am.

King Charles III and Queen Camilla at The Bordeaux's Hotel de Ville in Bordeaux, southwestern France. Picture: AFP

Fans who attempted to log in saw the message “Gateway time-out error code 504”.

Shortly after KillNet boasted on messenger app Telegram that it was responsible.

The group’s leader, KillMilk, claimed 20 minutes later that he was personally involved on his personal blog.

A palace spokesman said senior working royals’ accounts were not affected and that no sensitive information was stolen.

Members of the royal family have been largely supportive of Ukraine ever since Vladimir Putin’s forces invaded in February last year.

Two weeks ago, King Charles was heralded with a standing ovation in Paris when he condemned Russia’s “unprovoked aggression” and said “Ukraine must prevail”.

In July 2021, the late queen ordered the increased security following a report from her cyber security experts who warned there was a high rather than medium risk of unauthorised access to royal household data.

Experts also warned international cyber terrorists were a threat to King Charles’ coronation in May.

Originally published as Russian hackers take down royal family’s official website