European Commission targeted by cyber attack on Libya discussion summit eve

The cyber attack was described as "serious" by a Commission spokesperson, who said that EU High Representative Catherine Ashton's services appeared to have been particularly affected.

It remains unclear if the cyber attack is related to the Libya situation.

The attack took place late on Wednesday, a handful of hours before the two-day summit in Brussels at which economic issues were meant to dominate the agenda. However, developments in Libya are now expected to take centre stage.

The Commission reportedly shut down external access to e-mails. This morning, the Commission website appeared to be working normally again. The European Parliament also reported problems. MEPs and officials have been asked not to open an email with the following text in the subject line: "CONFIRMATION DE VOTRE IDENTITE. VERIFICATION DE VOTRE COMPTE E-MAIL."

Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi warned of reprisals on 17 March, when the UN Security Council voted to authorise the imposition of a no-fly zone over Libya.

"Any foreign military act against Libya will expose all air and maritime traffic in the Mediterranean Sea to danger and civilian and military [facilities] will become targets of Libya's counter-attack," said Gaddafi.

Yesterday's cyber attack incident was the time since the beginning of 2011. In January the European Union locked all accounts in its carbon market after a security breach of its Emissions Trading Scheme, following the suspected theft of about seven million euros' worth of emissions permits from the Czech Republic's carbon registry.

The Emissions Trading Scheme represented hub of a 92-billion-euro global market.

France's finance ministry also suffered a cyber attack in December, which targeted files on the G20 summit held in Paris last month.

EU and NATO authorities have been rethinking their common approach to telecommunications network protection in the wake of a massive cyber attack carried out against Estonian public and private strategic infrastructure in May 2007.

In March 2009, the European Commission published a new communication aimed at "protecting Europe from large scale cyber-attacks".