Largest cyber attack against Greek state org massively disrupts end-of-year HS advancement tests

A second consecutive cyber attack on Tuesday again prevented the smooth holding of end-of-year high school advancement exams, as educators could not access a data bank of questions, a particularly embarrassing incident that also occurred on Monday.

The back-to-back incidents caused Supreme Court chief prosecutor Isidoros Dogiakos to order an immediate investigation by the head of the Athens First-Instance Court Prosecutors’ Office, with the assistance of Greek Police’s (EL.AS) cyber crime unit.

The end-of-year exams in public and private high schools around the country were disrupted on Monday and again on Tuesday by a cyber attack that overloaded the system and caused the platform to shut down, leading to hours of delay and even the cancellations of some exams.

Most of the high school pupils sitting for the exams eventually received their questionnaires.

The cyber attacks targeted the relevant platform hosted on the Greek Research and Technology Network’s site, with authorities saying the latter received no less than 165 million denial-of-service attacks traced to domains in 114 countries, marking the worst cyber attack ever recorded against a Greek state organization.

In a quickly issued press release, the education ministry said the specific platform is wholly independent from the system used to convey questions for the all-important nationwide college placement exams.

The political fallout from the two-day fiasco witnessed opposition parties sharply criticizing the previous New Democracy (ND) government for the predicament, as a new general election looms on June 25.