Melita customers’ internet services were disrupted on Wednesday as the telecommunications provider faced a distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attack.

Melita has revealed that the attack was initiated by “cyber criminals aiming to extort money”.

DDOS attacks are commonly used to overwhelm a website or web service with an overload of traffic, forcing it to crash.

Melita have said that they are implementing mitigation measures to counter the attack and have assured customers that no systems were penetrated or breached.

They also apologised for the inconvenience caused. Calls, SMS and television services are said to have not been disrupted.

Bank of Valletta also experienced a serious cyber attack recently, reportedly having €13 million stolen during a cyber-attack in 2019.