Russia’s RuTube Offline for Second Day by Victory Day Cyber ​​Attack

RuTube, Russia’s answer to YouTube, was crippled by a cyberattack for the second day on Tuesday, the timing of which coincided with the anniversary celebrations of the victory over Nazi Germany in World War II this week.

Usually packed with video content, RuTube’s site is currently black, with a short message that read: “Attention! The site is undergoing technical work. The site was attacked. Situation under control at the moment” User data is saved.”

The attack began on Monday, a major national holiday when Russia celebrated the Soviet victory over Adolf Hitler and the president. Vladimir Putin He gave a speech comparing that conflict to the current war in Ukraine.

“Someone really wanted to stop RuTube from showing the Victory Day parade and celebratory fireworks,” RuTube said. “It is not a sin to remember the battles won by our people. The fight is on for RuTube.”

It described the cyberattack as the worst in the site’s history.

In a separate incident on Monday, Russian satellite television menus were hacked to show viewers in Moscow about events in Ukraine, including “You have blood on your hands”, according to screenshots obtained by Reuters.

The websites of state-owned companies and news websites have fallen under sporadic hacking attempts since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, often showing information that coincides with Moscow’s official line calling a “special military operation”. .

RuTube said a larger team was working to restore the service, and denied reports that it had lost the website’s source code.

The long outage is one way to explain why Russia hasn’t blocked yet alphabetical YouTube considers Moscow illegal to remove some state-backed Russian channels, despite repeated fines and warnings on the US service and for failing to remove the content.

by Russia. restricted access to Twitter and meta platform Facebook And instagram early March.

Critics have previously told Reuters that RuTube, despite the jump of its weekly user numbers in early March as other foreign social media was kicked out of the Russian market, still has a potential to rival Google’s video product. Long way to go.

© Thomson Reuters 2022