Internet & Democracy Blog

I’m just waking up to discover that, coinciding with today’s Russian Duma elections, there has been a series of major DDOS attacks that have at times brought down a number of leading independent media outlets, the LiveJournal blogging platform, and the online ‘map of [election] violations’ by election watchdog group Golos. Key independent mass media sites include the very influential Echo of Moscow radio and newspapers Kommersant, Novaya Gazeta (which is often critical of the Kremlin, has been the victim of DDOS attacks previously and has also had a handful of its journalists killed over the last few years), Bolshoi Gorod, slon.ru, and the more oppositional New Times. The election watch dog group Golos has been the target since last week of a government campaign against ‘outside’ influence in the election (they are funded by US and European groups). They were the subject of a thirty minute NTV special last week after warnings about outside interference in the election from Putin. The primary Russian blogging platform LiveJournal, which hosts the majority of blogs focused on politics and public affairs has also been attacked. The number of sites attacked at once seems unprecedented, and taking place during the Duma election cannot be considered a coincidence. As usual with DDOS attacks, it will likely be difficult if not impossible to determine who is behind the attacks.

Gregory Asmolov at Global Voices has the most exhaustive list of sites attacked that I’ve seen:

thenewtimes.ru, echo.msk.ru, novayagazeta.ru, kommersant.ru, publicpost.ru, slon.ru, Bolshoy Gorod (bg.ru), golos.org, ikso.org, ridus.ru, zaks.ru (Saint Petersburg), pryaniki.org (Tula), crowdsourcing platform “Karta Narusheniy” and Livejournal platform.

Alexey Sidorenko has a couple updates on his Twitter feed @sidorenko_intl

And the Moscow times election live blog also has some details and updates.

Be Sociable, Share!

• 
•