Sweden has faced a large-scale wave of cyberattacks targeting key government and financial institutions in the country, Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said while commenting on recent outages, including an attack on the national broadcaster SVT.
The Prime Minister emphasized that the country is under constant and large-scale cyberattacks. This time, not only SVT was affected, but also banks and the Bank-ID identification system. He noted that the Swedish security service Säpo had previously warned about cyber threats from countries such as Russia, China, and Iran, although the Prime Minister did not name any specific culprit.
Internet expert Mons Jonasson from the Internet Foundation agrees with the government’s assessment. He pointed out that the attacks have become significantly more targeted. In the past, mainly individual municipalities were affected and incidents were mostly random; now, major and important institutions are under attack, which may indicate a coordinated attempt either to destabilize or to test the resilience of Sweden’s digital infrastructure.
SVT sent a request to Säpo asking for comments on the situation. The agency confirmed that foreign states have long and systematically tried to find vulnerabilities in Sweden’s security system, including through cyberattacks. Säpo emphasized that such actions could be used to collect data or carry out activities threatening national security.
Thus, Sweden is seriously concerned about the rise in targeted cyberattacks and believes foreign states may be behind them.
