The Russian state media company VGTRK was targeted in an unprecedented cyber attack, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said today.
VGTRK, which owns and operates Russia’s main national television channels and a number of regional channels and radio stations, announced earlier today that its online services were cyber-attacked overnight, but that its radio and television services are operating normally despite the attack.
Ukrainian hackers are responsible for today’s large-scale cyberattack on VGTRK, which coincided with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s 72nd birthday, a Ukrainian government source said.
They also disappeared the backups
Russian news website Gazeta.ru, citing an unnamed source, says the cyberattack targeted the online and internal services of the VGTRK company.
“Webcasts and domestic services are down and even the internet and phones are down. It will take a long time to repair them” the source is quoted as saying.
“I heard that the hackers deleted everything from the servers, including the backups. They have been working in a state of blockade since six in the morning.”
Zakharova: The attack is part of a hybrid war
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, speaking in Moscow, did not say who was behind the attack, but told reporters that Russian media had long been targeted by what she called the “collective West” and said what happened was part of “a hybrid war”.
Moscow will raise the issue of cyberattacks in all international forums, including UNESCO, the UN agency that promotes freedom of speech, Zakharova said.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said earlier that VGTRK was the target of an unprecedented cyber attack and that experts were working hard to identify those responsible.
RES/EMP
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