Estonia's state authentication service has repeatedly malfunctioned in recent weeks
Estonia's state authentication system again malfunctioned on October 1, disrupting access to several public e-services. Officials say the causes have varied between technical issues and, in one case, a DDoS attack.
Estonia's state authentication service experienced fresh disruptions on October 1, making it difficult to access a number of public-sector electronic services. Similar incidents have occurred repeatedly over recent weeks.
Brett-Maria Rikko, a communications specialist at the State Information System Authority (RIA), told ERR that the outages had different causes. Several were linked to technical problems, while one incident involved a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack targeting the authentication service.
Rikko noted that in the case of a DDoS attack, it is impossible to determine either the motive or the source of the attack with certainty.
She confirmed that the services are continuously monitored and that responses to disruptions are immediate, which has helped shorten their duration. Additional measures have also been introduced to detect failures earlier and react to them faster, she said, with some solutions already in use and others still being implemented.
According to information obtained by ERR, the state authentication service malfunctioned twice in the last week of September — on September 21 and September 24. In both cases, technical problems were cited as the cause.
