According to the state media regulator Roskomnadzor, a cyberattack in Russia briefly led to a large-scale outage of the online services Telegram and Whatsapp on Wednesday. As of 2 p.m. (local time), the Center for Monitoring and Control of Public Communications Networks registered “a large-scale disruption to the operation of the messenger services Telegram and Whatsapp,” it said in a statement.
The authority later stated that the cause was a “DDoS attack on Russian telecommunications providers”. Denial-of-service attacks (DDoS) are a relatively simple method of bringing a system to a crash by flooding it with requests. According to Roskomnadzor, the attack was eventually repelled, so that services were functioning normally again from 3 p.m. The perpetrator could not initially be identified.
Such a cyberattack is rare in Russia. The Kremlin has significantly increased its control over the Internet since the start of the offensive in Ukraine in February 2022, banning several online services such as Facebook, Instagram and X. However, the websites are still accessible via VPN connections.
The video platform YouTube was not blocked, but rumors of a ban continued to circulate here. In March 2022, Roskomnadzor had already accused Google and YouTube of “terrorist” activities.
In Ukraine, however, there have been several cyberattacks since the start of the Russian offensive, often targeting government websites. Ukrainian authorities repeatedly accuse Russia of being involved in the incidents, which Moscow denies.
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