Six Russian government websites including Kremlin website down
Shafaq News / After the government of Ukraine has asked for volunteers from the country's hacker underground, 6 Russian government websites including the Kremlins official website are down.
As of Saturday, State Telecommunications Service stated more than 6 Russian government websites including the Kremlins official website are down and inaccessible following reports of cyberattacks on various other Russian government and state media websites.
Anonymous claims responsibility for "ongoing" hacking of Russian government sites. From CNN's Vasco Cotovio and Mia Alberti.
Some Russian government websites continued to be down on Saturday, as the country's invasion of Ukraine is in its third day.
The websites that are dark notably include the Kremlin and the Ministry of Defence.
The exact reasons for the outages are not immediately clear, but the international hacking group Anonymous has claimed that it is attacking the sites.
"Anonymous has ongoing operations to keep .ru government websites offline, and to push information to the Russian people so they can be free of Putin's state censorship machine," the group said in a tweet.On Friday, the same Russian websites appeared offline for a while, but the Kremlin denied it was being attacked by Anonymous, according to state media. It’s the third day in a row Russian websites have been inaccessible, at least for some period of time.
Anonymous said it is also working "to keep the Ukrainian people online as best we can."
This occured the government of Ukraine has asked for volunteers from the country's hacker underground to help protect critical infrastructure and conduct cyber spying missions against Russian troops, according to two people involved in the project. However, it is unclear if the two incidents are related.
As Russian forces attacked cities across Ukraine, requests for volunteers began to appear on hacker forums on Thursday morning, as many residents fled the capital Kyiv.
"Ukrainian cybercommunity! It's time to get involved in the cyber defense of our country," the post read, asking hackers and cybersecurity experts to submit an application via Google docs, listing their specialties, such as malware development, and professional references.
Source: Jerusalem Post
