Russian government websites and state-run media platforms face a wave of ‘unprecedented’ cyberattacks, the Russian government announced on Thursday. After hacking attacks, the regulators have started filtering traffic coming from outside Russia.
Russian government websites and state-owned companies have faced outages and temporary loss of access. These include websites of Kremlin, Aeroflot, and banks like Sberbank.
Russian government websites face “unprecedented” wave of hacking attacks, ministry says https://t.co/YfDkuQYIHg
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) March 17, 2022
The Ministry of Digital Development and Communications said that the attacks were more powerful than the previous ones. The officials said that they had implemented traffic filtering measures. While there is no further information on these measures, in the past, the government has banned access to Russian websites from abroad.
“We are recording unprecedented attacks on the websites of government authorities…If their capacity at peak time reached 500 GB earlier, it is not up to 1 TB. That is, two of three times more powerful than the most serious incidents of this type previously recorded,” said the statement.
On Wednesday, the website of the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry was hacked by attackers, and they altered its content. The hackers replaced the number of the department with a number that soldiers in Russia can contact in case they feel like defecting from the army -written under the title ‘Come back from Ukraine alive.”
Other ministry websites were hacked, and the content was changed to lines like ‘Don’t Believe Russian media – they lie’ or ‘click this link for full information about the war in Ukraine.’
Hackers also added insults aimed at the Russian government and President Vladimir Putin over the war in Ukraine on various websites.
Russia’s public portal, Gosuslugi, faced more than 50 DDoS attacks. Similarly, Russian news agency, Tass was also hacked as hackers left messages on websites like ‘take to the streets against the war.”
Russia recently passed a censorship law against the spread of false information about the military and the use of words like ‘war’ or ‘invasion’ to describe the “situation” in Ukraine.
Western countries have imposed serious sanctions on Russia, resulting in isolating the economy from global financial systems. Recently, Canada also joined NATO, imposing sanctions on Russia and sending aid to Ukraine.
Considering the current scenario, the Russian government has proposed various measures to support the IT sector and others, according to Interfax. According to reports, the government has proposed to allocate 14 billion roubles ($135 million) to support IT companies.
The cyber warfare resulting after the war in Ukraine is leading to great disturbances worldwide. Just a few days ago, the Anonymous group hacked the Russian database of Roskomnadzor and leaked more than 360,000 documents online. Anonymous had launched a cyber-proxy war over the conflict in Ukraine in February.
