The website of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in addition to other German government sites, became unavailable Wednesday to visitors as a result of a cyber attack.
While Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert indicated that a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack caused the disruption to the websites of the German Parliament, he did not indicate who may be responsible, although a pro-Russian outfit CyberBerkut claimed credit on its website Wednesday, according to an Associated Press report.
The attack precedes an anticipated visit to Berlin by Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who is expected to meet with Merkel, an outspoken figure regarding the Ukraine crisis.
The cyber attack on the German government comes on the heels of recent reports that spying malware had infected the laptop of one of Merkel's top aides. A German government spokesperson discredited those claims.
