COPENHAGEN: Danish government and defense websites were hit in a wide-ranging cyberattack on Thursday, the country's Civil Protection Agency said, with pro-Russia hackers claiming responsibility.

The agency was "aware that several Danish companies and websites were currently experiencing outages and operating disruptions because of DDoS attacks", it said in a statement provided to AFP.

Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks halt access to a website by overloading its servers with traffic.

The agency said it was "following the situation closely," in tandem with Denmark's military intelligence agency.

A pro-Russian hacker group called NoName057 said on social media it had attacked Danish sites, including the Ministry of Transport and the public sector portal Borger.dk, as well as the defense group Terma, which confirmed it had been attacked.

"We're aware that a Russian hacker group has claimed that it (would) disrupt our website as well as the ones of several Danish authorities, but it's too early to say they are responsible," Terma spokesman Tobias Brun-Falkencrone told AFP.

"We are well geared to handle this kind of cyberattack and acted quickly. There were no security breaches, and no data was lost."

On Wednesday, the same hacker group said it had hit several Danish municipalities less than a week before local elections in the Scandinavian country—which is one of Ukraine's most ardent supporters.

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Cyberattack hits Danish govt, defense websites