The All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company, VGTRK, one of Russia’s largest media organizations, was hit by a massive cyber attack on Monday even as Ukrainian hackers claimed responsibility.
The attack coincided with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s 72nd birthday, disrupting the broadcaster’s digital infrastructure and taking its 24-hour news channel, Rossiya-24, offline.
VGTRK’s website and online services were inaccessible, displaying a “503 Service Unavailable” error message. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov confirmed the unprecedented attack on the state media giant, stating that specialists were working to investigate the breach and trace the origins of the cyberattack.
A Ukrainian government source, speaking anonymously, told Reuters that the attack was a deliberate effort by Kyiv’s hackers to “congratulate” Putin on his birthday. However, this claim has not been independently verified.
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Russian news outlet Gazeta.ru reported that the attack affected VGTRK’s online broadcasting, internal services, and telephony systems, leaving the media company in lockdown.
The report disclosed that the hackers may have wiped everything from the servers, including critical backups, making the recovery process lengthy.
Maria Zakharova, spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry, did not attribute the attack to a specific group but said that Russian media has long been targeted by “the collective West” as part of a larger “hybrid war.”
Zakharova vowed that Moscow would raise the issue of the cyberattack in international forums, including UNESCO, to highlight the ongoing threats against Russian media.
The disruption comes at a sensitive time, as VGTRK serves as a key outlet for Russian state-controlled news, including updates on the war in Ukraine.
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