The website and IT infrastructure of Serbia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs have been targeted by cyberattacks for the last 48 hours, the Serbian government said in a statement on January 7. 

The attacks followed a previous attack on the defence ministry website, which was claimed by Anonymous, the world’s largest hacker collective. 

Serbia’s government said on January 7: “the [interior] ministry's website and IT infrastructure have been constantly under a massive DDoS attack for the last 48 hours, and so far five large attacks aimed at disabling the IT infrastructure of the Ministry of Interior have been repelled.” 

Ministry IT experts worked with those from Serbia Telecom to repel the attacks. 

The ministry has activated enhanced security protocols to protect its data which, the official statement warned, can lead to slower work and occasional interruptions of certain services. 

Anonymous has continued its criticism of Serbia over its failure to take a stance against Russia over the invasion of Ukraine in the last couple of days. 

“Serbia is Russian backdoor to Europe and needs to be fixed,” said a post on the Anonymous Operations Twitter account. Another criticised Serbia for not recognising the Srebrenica genocide in Bosnia & Herzegovina. 

Earlier in the week, the collective stated its intention to target Serbian government infrastructure. “#Anonymous has launched #OpSerbia taking numerous government websites down the past few days. Targeting government infrastructure,” said a tweet from the Anonymous Operations Twitter account.