Russian sites hit by massive hack amidst elections

A group of websites which were reportedly set to expose widespread fraud in Russia’s legislative elections have been targeted in a massive hacking attack.

The owners of popular Russian radio station Moscow Echo and election monitoring group Golos, said their websites were under attack, while a number of opposition news sites were also rendered inaccessible.

“The attack on the website on election day is clearly an attempt to inhibit publication of information about violations,” Moscow Echo editor-in-chief Alexei Venediktov wrote on Twitter.

Both the Moscow Echo and Golos claim to have been the victim of a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. Such an attack occurs when multiple systems flood the bandwidth or resources of a targeted system, usually one or more web servers.

These kinds of assaults are becoming increasingly prevalent as hackers target governemnts, institutions and large corporations.

Earlier this year, for instance, the governments of South Korea, WordPress and 29 international government agencies were attacked on the same day.

Although Moscow Echo is owned by state gas giant Gazprom, it is popular with Russia’s liberal opposition.

Vladimir Putin’s United Russia Party, has been the dominant political force in Russia since its official formation in 2001. It is, however, expected to lose ground as election results are announced.

Even so, CNN says it is likely to remain the clear winner, taking around 49.5% of the poll.

United Russia has, in the past, denounced organisations like Golos, reportedly comparing them to Judas.

According to Golos head Liliya Shibhanova, authorities were especially angry about its Map of Violations project, where people could upload information and evidence of election fraud.

“It’s a very expensive operation,” Shibanova said of the attacks. “It’s a big organisation with plenty of means that must have done it.”

Similar projects using Ushahidi project technology developed in Kenya, have been a hugely successful tool for reporting electoral fraud.

According to Sibhanova, who was held in custody for nearly 12 hours by customs officials (who also confiscated her computer) the attack consisted of 50 000 hits per second by computers attempting to access the Golos website.

Moscow Echo, meanwhile, has laid a complaint with the Central Election Committee as well as the offices of Putin and Russian president Dimitry Medvedev.

“Any hacker attack on any resource leads to financial losses, which is essentially the same as stealing,” said the chairman of Moscow Echo’s board of directors Nikolai Senkevich, adding that Gazprom’s media holding “fully supports” the station’s concern.

Complaints have not, however, been limited to opposition groups. Pro-Kremlin groups say their own websites, detailing electoral violations by opposition groups, have had problems.

Some Russian bloggers said they were also unable to access their LiveJournal accounts. The blogging platform’s website has reportedly been under near-constant attack and has only worked intermittently.

“The goal of the attackers is clear,” Anton Nossik, the media director of Livejournal owner SUP, wrote on his blog, alleging that the perpetrators are a “group of criminals” who are “probably fattened by the federal budget.”