On August 26, 2026, TV 2 published a piece under the headline “Erklærer cyberkrig mot Norge: – Er dette det beste dere klarer?”. A pro-Russian group had declared “cyberwar” on Norway and run a wave of DDoS attacks against public services. TV 2 asked me, as a security professional at River Security, to put it in perspective.
Before the substance, one thing I want to be clear about: I don’t like naming these groups. Attention is the whole point of a DDoS campaign like this. Publicity gives the people behind it exactly what they are after — a bigger stage, more credibility, and potentially more volunteers signing up to point their infected routers at the next target. So I’ll keep this about the attack pattern, not the brand behind it.
This provokes, it doesn’t devastate
A denial-of-service attack doesn’t steal your identity or your money. It tries to make a service unreachable for a while. As I told TV 2, this is “an attack that only provokes, creates irritation and perhaps even fear.” That’s the design goal — noise and uncertainty, not technical destruction.
And in this case it didn’t even work particularly well. Most people were not affected, because the services under attack held up reasonably well. When you look at the actual impact, this was closer to business as usual than to a crisis.
It’s also worth remembering where a lot of this capacity comes from. Many of these attacks are powered by ordinary, compromised devices — “because your grandmother’s router is infected with a virus.” That’s a hygiene problem we can chip away at, not a superweapon.
Answer with resilience, not fear
My core point to TV 2 was about how we respond as a society. The wrong response is fear. The right response is competence and resilience.
As a society we must stand forward with our chests out, and with viking mentality answer: “Is this the best you can do?”
One thing is to lie down and take it. Another is to get up, keep our services running, and treat this as the ordinary weather of operating online. We just need to show we’re tough and that this is business as usual.
None of this is new — so let’s prepare for more of it
This has been happening for years, and it will keep happening. That’s exactly why the takeaway shouldn’t be alarm. We know these campaigns come and go; the useful work is making sure our public services and infrastructure are built to absorb them — good DDoS protection, tested resilience, and calm communication when the noise inevitably returns.
The future holds more of these attacks, not fewer. Let’s meet them with preparation and confidence rather than giving the people behind them the fear, and the fame, they’re fishing for.