The Ukrainian public operator of nuclear power plants, Energoatom, denounced, Tuesday, August 16, a Russian cyberattack ” unprecedented “ against his site. “On August 16, 2022, the most powerful cyberattack since the beginning of the Russian invasion took place against the official website of Energoatom”, the operator said on social media. The website “was attacked from Russian territory”he added.
The Russian People’s Cyberarmy group used 7.25 million Internet robots that attacked the Energoatom site for three hours, assured the Ukrainian company, according to which this hacking attempt “did not have a considerable impact on the work of the Energoatom site”.
At midday, the Telegram channel called “People’s Cyberarmy” in Russian called on its supporters to attack the Energoatom site. In the evening, she announced a ” change “now designating as a target the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance, whose site was encountering difficulties.
Tensions around the Zaporizhia power plant
These attacks come in full tension around the nuclear power plant in Zaporizhia, located in southern Ukraine and occupied by Russian troops since March, shortly after Moscow launched the invasion of its neighbor. Several strikes of which Moscow and kyiv accuse each other have targeted this installation, the largest in Europe, raising fears of a nuclear disaster.
Ukraine has four nuclear power plants, which provided, before the invasion, about half of the electricity production of this vast country, located on the border of the European Union.
Then a Soviet republic, Ukraine had already been the scene of the worst nuclear disaster in history in 1986, when a reactor at its Chernobyl power plant (in the North) exploded, contaminating much of Europe. kyiv shut down the last operational Chernobyl reactor in 2000. After the invasion began in February, Russian troops seized the facility and the highly radioactive area around it within a radius of 30 kilometers for several weeks. .