The Kremlin’s official website has fallen amid war in Ukraine

Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting with members of the Security Council in Moscow, Russia, February 21, 2022. Sputnik/Alexey Nikolsky/Kremlin via Reuters

MOSCOW (Reuters) – The official website of the Kremlin, the office of Russian President Vladimir Putin, kremlin.ru, was down on Saturday, following reports of Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks on various Russian state and state media outlets. sites.

Last week, Britain and the United States said that Russian military hackers were behind a series of DDoS attacks that briefly disrupted the websites of Ukrainian banks and government websites before the Russian invasion. Read more

The Kremlin website outage on Saturday comes amid increasingly urgent online calls for arms from members of the hacking community, including from Twitter accounts historically linked to Anonymous, the amorphous online activist community that first attracted global attention about a decade ago.

Russian-themed leaks and hacks attributed to the group have begun to spread across the web – although, as is often the case with Anonymous and other hacker groups, claims are still difficult to prove.

It is not unusual for independent or ideologically motivated hackers to jump into global struggles on one side or the other; Similar actions occurred during the Arab Spring uprisings.

Occasionally, parties to the conflict come to the attention of piracy activists; Reuters reported on Thursday that the Ukrainian government put in a call to the secret hacker to help support his weak efforts to fend off the Russians. Read more

A newly discovered piece of destructive software has been found circulating in Ukraine, infecting hundreds of computers, researchers at the cybersecurity company ESET said on Wednesday. Read more

Suspicion fell on Russia, which has repeatedly been accused of hacking operations against Ukraine and other countries. Reuters reported earlier that among the victims are government agencies and a financial institution.

Russia denied the allegations.

Reporting from Andrew Osborne. Additional reporting by Raphael Satter and James Pearson. Writing by Olzhas Auyezov; Editing by Diane Craft

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