The video platform Rutube, which wants to be a Russian competitor of the American giant YouTube, is inaccessible on Tuesday. In a press release, she said she was the victim of “the biggest cyberattack in its history”.
Black background, white writing: “Attention ! The site is in technical works. This Tuesday, it is impossible for Internet users to access videos, podcasts or even vlogs from the Rutube platform. The site, claiming to be a Russian competitor of the American giant YouTube, is inaccessible after being targeted by “the biggest cyberattack in its history”, he said in a statement posted on Telegram.
Restoring access to the platform “will take longer than engineers initially thought”, continues the company, owned by Gazprom-Media, the largest Russian media holding company. On its site, however, it reassures Internet users: “Currently, the situation is under control. User data is saved. The service has been inaccessible since Monday, the day when Russia celebrated with great fanfare May 9 marking the 1945 victory over the Nazis, in particular justifying its invasion of Ukraine. The attack would come from the same hackers who “constantly attacked the sites of Russian public institutions for the past two months”according to Rutube, after the outbreak of the Russian offensive on February 24.
Indeed, in Ukraine and in order to respond to the regular cyberattacks to which the country is also subject, the Minister in charge of digital, Mykhailo Fedorov, erected a volunteer cyber army, the IT Army, grouped together in a Telegram messaging channel. Today, more than 270,000 members have joined in order to launch attacks against the computer systems of Russian institutions, the media or to publish messages of support for Ukraine on these sites. “We will continue to work until the Kremlin speaks”, Fedorov wrote on his Telegram channel, sharing the Rutube press release.
On Monday, Ukrainian media also reported, with photos, a hacking of the broadcast systems of Russian television channels MTS, NTV-Plus, Rostelecom and Winx to display the message “The blood of thousands of Ukrainians and hundreds of their killed children is on your hands. Television and the authorities lie. No to war”. A long text denouncing the Russian military intervention in Ukraine, “bloody and absurd”was also published on Monday morning by two journalists from the Lenta.ru news site, considered loyal to the Russian authorities, before being quickly withdrawn. “We are now looking for work, lawyers and maybe political asylum”explain its authors, Egor Poliakov and Alexandra Miroshnikova.
In March, Marina Ovsiannikova, an employee of the Pervy Kanal, made a name for herself by appearing live on Russia’s most-watched television news, on this national channel, with a sign criticizing Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine and denouncing the “propaganda” favor of the government-controlled media. Images of this gesture have gone around the world, with many Internet users hailing an act of “extraordinary courage”in a context of repression of any critical voice in Russia.
In the Telegram chat loops of the Ukrainian IT Army on Tuesday, some members claim that Rutube would be “unrecoverable” because the source code of the website would have been “completely removed”. Information denied by the Russian company in its press release: “The source code is available, the library is intact”she wrote.