Govt. platform for helping troubled SMEs in RO crashes on launch day

The online platform launched by the Romanian Government to collect applications from small and medium enterprises hit by the COVID-19 crisis crashed on the day of its launch.

Finance minister Florin Citu accused a cyberattack on the website.

The imminvest.ro domain was set up to collect applications from SMEs that want state aid to combat the negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on their businesses.

The platform is managed by the National Loan Guarantee Fund for SMEs (FNGCIMM).

"FNGCIMM has publicly presented data indicating a cyberattack on the IMM Invest website. Who attacked this site?" stated Citu, quoted by Agerpres.

The website crashed at the time of opening after receiving 397,000 hits per minute from 132,000 connections FNGCIMM general manager Dumitru Nancu said in a press conference on Friday.

"From 5:30 until 8:30, there were 2,785 hits. The portal opened at 10:00 when it recorded 397,000 hits per minute from 132,000 connections. In Romania, as you well know, there are 475,000 SMEs," said Dumitru Nancu, suggesting that the traffic did not come real applicants. He mentioned that this volume of traffic blocked both the imminvest.ro site and the fngcimm.ro site.

The Special Telecommunications Service (STS) and the Cyberint National Center of the Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI) have started an investigation into causes that led to this situation. STS will also take over the management of the application.

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