European Commission investigates cyber attack on its websites

The European Commission is investigating a cyber attack on its websites, with early findings suggesting that some data was taken, it said Friday.

The EU executive said it discovered the attack on Tuesday and took “immediate steps” to contain it.

The attack hit the cloud computing infrastructure used by the Commission to manage the Europa.eu platform, where the Commission, European Parliament, Council of the EU and other EU institutions’ websites are located. 

The incident was “contained,” the Commission said. But the early stages of its investigation suggest some data may have been taken from those websites, it added. Its own internal systems were not affected, it said.

It did not say who was responsible for the attack.

European governments and companies are increasingly under attack from hacking groups, both criminal and state-sponsored. The head of the EU’s cyber agency, ENISA, recently warned that Europe is “losing massively.”

The Commission added that it is in the process of contacting EU institutions that might have been affected, and that it will continue to monitor the situation and will later analyze what happened in order to boost its cyber protection in future.

The European Parliament experienced a major data breach in 2024 following the hack of an HR system.

A body called CERT-EU, which sits within the Commission’s IT department, is responsible for the cybersecurity of EU institutions.