Ukrainian hackers just gave Vladimir Putin a birthday present the Kremlin definitely does not appreciate, according to reports.
The state media company VGTRK, which manages Russia’s main nationals TV stations, confirmed it was hit by a cyberattack on Monday morning but said “no significant damage was caused”.
Still, all of VGTRK’s online broadcasting and streaming websites were disrupted along with its internal services.
And when HuffPost UK attempted to access VGTRK’s 24-hour news website Rossiya-24, a message popped up: “503 Service Unavailable. No server is available to handle this request.”
Ukraine did not openly take responsibility for the attack, and the Kremlin did not immediately name Kyiv as the culprit.
But a Ukrainian government source told Reuters news agency and POLITICO: “Ukrainian hackers ‘congratulated’ Putin on his birthday by carrying out a large-scale attack on the all-Russian state television and radio broadcasting company.”
Despite VGTRK’s attempts to downplay it, the insider suggested it had caused widespread disruption.
They said: “Employees complained that all information on the servers has been destroyed, even backup copies, online broadcasting, and internal services do not work, there is no Internet and telephone, connection.”
Gazeta-ru, a Russian state-owned news outlet, also claimed it was Ukrainian-linked hacker group “sudo rm-RF”.
The Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov confirmed it was a cyberattack on Monday, telling reporters: “Our state media holding, one of the largest, has faced an unprecedented hacker attack on its digital infrastructure.
“Specialists are working to find out all the circumstances, to understand where the traces left behind by those who organised this hacker attack on the critical infrastructure object lead.”
Maria Zakharova, a spokesperson for the Russian foreign ministry, did not say who the Kremlin thought was behind the attack.
But she told the press that Russian media had become targets for “the collective West” and suggested the move was part of a “hybrid war,” on top of the physical battle Putin instigated by invading Ukraine in February 2022.
She said Russia would be mentioning the cyberattack to international organisations, particularly UNESCO, which is concerned with freedom of speech.
It’s worth noting that the Kremlin has driven out any independent media outlets out of Russia in recent years. Those which remain are subject to military censorship.
The hacking coincides with Putin’s 72nd birthday, and state media was – as expected – singing his praises hours before the cyberattack became clear.
According to state news agency TASS, Putin planned to celebrate his birthday at work and “cannot afford even one day of complete rest”.
TASS claimed the Russian president tries to avoid unnecessary attention to the subject, saying: “It’s my birthday, it’s not a national holiday. It seems to me immodest to exaggerate the importance of this event.”