Russian hackers target Royals days after King Charles condemned war in Ukraine

RUSSIAN cyber criminals targeted the Royal Family yesterday — days after King Charles’s condemnation of the Ukraine war.

Hacktivist pro-Putin group KillNet said they brought down the royal.uk website for 90 minutes this morning ­— forcing Palace chiefs to scramble their cyber security experts.

A source said: “This was a denial of service attack which saw the site bombarded with traffic.”

Royal fans trying to log in saw the message “Gateway time-out error code 504”.

Soon after, KillNet bragged on messenger app Telegram that it was responsible.

And KillNet’s leader — KillMilk — boasted of his involvement on his personal blog 20 minutes after the site went down.

Palace chiefs said senior royals’ personal accounts weren’t hacked, nor sensitive information stolen.

But the ease with how the attack was executed will jolt the family.

Royals have been hugely supportive of Ukraine ever since Vladimir Putin’s forces invaded in February last year.

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

And in February he hosted President Volodymyr Zelensky at Buckingham Palace for talks.

Prince William travelled to Ukraine’s border with Poland this year to thank troops, while Prince Edward has visited Nato fighters on the border in Estonia.

Kate wore a dress in the blue and yellow of Ukraine’s flag at Eurovision, and also carried flowers in the colours.

Queen Elizabeth chose the same colours for duties before her death.

The family has even housed Ukrainian refugees.

Last year the Five Eyes intelligence alliance of the UK, US, Canada, New Zealand and Australia warned about KillNet.

Recently the group set up a private military hacking company called Black Skills.

KillNet is notorious for attacks on the websites of countries that support Ukraine.

A Distributed Denial of Service attack — its weapon of choice — involves sending thousands of connection requests to the target server or website a minute, slowing or stopping vulnerable systems.

Such attacks can lead to outages sometimes lasting days.

A royal source told The Sun: “It was not hacking because hacking is when the website is compromised and they gain access to the system.

“This was a denial of service attack which saw the site bombarded with traffic.”

The royals have bolstered cyber defences in recent years.

In February 2021 ex-MI5 chief Andrew Parker was made head of the Royal Household.

And a month later the Queen appointed Elliot Atkins as her first chief information security officer.

In July 2021 a Palace report warned the Household was at “high risk” from cyber criminals.

It warned the effect of hacking would be: “Reputational damage, penalties and/or legal action against the Household or staff.”

Buckingham Palace declined to comment tonight.