Several websites that were broadcasting President Putin’s speech in the state of the nation address on Tuesday were reportedly taken down by a suspected distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.
During the address, the All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Corporation (VGTRK) website and the Smotrim live-streaming platform were intermittently unavailable to journalists situated in various regions, according to Reuters.
While VGTRK displayed an error message stating that “technical operations were being carried out,” it claimed that the Smotrim website did not load.
Other sources were able to confirm a DDoS as the cause, despite Reuters’ inability to do so. According to reports from the RIA Novosti news agency and a Twitter account associated with the IT Army of Ukraine, malevolent internet actors were to blame.
“Well done! We conducted a DDoS attack on the channels 1TV, VGTRK, and Smotrim that were broadcasting Putin’s speech to the federal assembly,” it said in a post that included a link to the official account of the incident.“Slava Ukraini.”
The IT Army is a hacktivist organization that was established at the outset of the conflict in response to requests from Mykhailo Fedorov, the vice prime minister of Ukraine, seeking followers to help assault Russian targets. The chosen targets are then made known to a Telegram group.
Campaigns like these are much easier to run now because it is simple for hacktivists to download DDoS-for-hire tools and services, even though they rarely disrupt targets more than sometimes.
The Moscow Stock Exchange, many Russian banks, and the website of a major portal for the distribution of alcohol have all been attacked in the past.
Russian hacktivists, most notably Killnet, have been active as well. In the previous year, the organization has taken credit for several rather big targets, including 14 US airports, a number of government websites in Lithuania and Japan, and US and Dutch hospitals. Unconfirmed but plausible Killnet ties to the Russian government.
Conclusion
During the annual state of the nation address by President Vladimir Putin speech address earlier today, it is believed that a distributed denial of service (DDoS) cyberattack took down several Russian news stations. Together with a gang with alleged ties to anti-Russian government protester Alexei Navalny, The attack’s perpetrator has been identified as the Ukrainian IT Army.
Since the low-level cyber component of the Russia-Ukraine conflict shows no signs of abating, The incident occurred after reports that Russia-supporting hacker organization Killnet has been actively attacking websites linked to Nato. Earlier today, at his annual state of the nation address, Putin discussed the situation in the Russia-Ukraine conflict and announced that Russia would be suspending its adherence to the treaty on strategic offensive weapons. The START accord places a limit on how many warheads each country can use.
