THE Royal Family’s official website was offline today after it was said to be “attacked” by Russian hackers.

The site royal.uk displayed an error message for around two hours this morning following “a denial of service attack”.

It comes after Queen Elizabeth stepped up defences against hackers after learning the Royal Family were a high-profile target.

This type of attack occurs when a website is deliberately bombarded with access requests, and cannot cope which differs from being hacked when a criminal breaks into the back end of a website.

It’s thought the site went down shortly after 10.20am and lasted around two hours.

Russian hackers have now claimed responsibility for the attack.

KillMilk, the purported leader of the Russian hacktivist group KillNet, claimed in a Telegram post they were behind the takedown.

The site is now back up and running although it is slow to load at first.

A source told The Sun Online: “The website wasn’t hacked. It was a denial of service attack.

“This is when a site is bombarded with access requests.

“The royal household’s systems and content was not accessed.

“We can’t say yet who was responsible.”

IT experts for the Royal Family are currently working on fully restoring the website.

Buckingham Palace declined to comment when approached by The Sun Online.

In July 2021, Her Majesty ordered the increased security following a report from her cyber security experts who warned there was a high rather than medium risk of unauthorised access to Royal Household data.

The report, written by Sir Michael Stevens, Keeper of the Privy Purse, said the effect of hacking would be: “Reputational damage, penalties and/or legal action against the Household or members of staff.”

Experts also warned international cyber terrorists were a potential threat to King Charles’ coronation in May.

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