After DDoS attacks

WhatsApp & Telegram temporarily offline in Russia

According to the state media supervisory authority Roskomnadzor, a cyber attack in Russia briefly led to a widespread outage of the online services Telegram and WhatsApp on Wednesday. Nothing worked for an hour.

From 2 p.m. (local time), the Center for Monitoring and Control of Public Communications Networks registered "a large-scale disruption in the operation of the Telegram and Whatsapp messenger services", according to a statement. A short time later, the authority cited a "DDoS attack on Russian telecommunications providers" as the cause.

Flooded with requests
"Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks are a relatively simple method of crashing a system by flooding it with requests. According to Roskomnadzor, the attack was eventually repelled and services were back to normal from 3pm. It was not initially possible to identify the perpetrator.

Such a cyber attack is rare in Russia. The Kremlin has tightened its control over the internet since the start of the offensive in Ukraine in February 2022 and banned online services such as Facebook, Instagram and X. However, the websites are still accessible via VPN connections.

YouTube slowed down
The video platform YouTube was not blocked, although rumors of a ban have repeatedly circulated and it reacts unusually slowly in Russia. Back in March 2022, Roskomnadzor accused Google and YouTube of "terrorist" activities.

In Ukraine, on the other hand, 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.