Russian Foreign Ministry suffers ‘powerful’ cyber attack
The Russian Foreign Ministry reportedly suffered an “unprecedented” cyberattack launched by an unknown threat actor.
In a statement this week (October 23), Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said it postponed a press conference following a “powerful” distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack against the ministry infrastructure.
“In view of the powerful DDoS attack against the Internet platform of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, we have postponed the press conference until 2:00 p.m. Moscow time,” Zakharova said.
“Specialists are working to restore the functioning of the resources.”
Zakharova added that the ministry periodically suffers from cyberattacks, but called the latest one “on an unprecedented scale.”
It is unclear whether the incident led to any additional malicious activity, such as data exfiltration.
The cyberattack coincided with the BRICS summit, the meeting of the BRICS military alliance, which will take place from October 22 to 24 in Kazan, Russia.
The military alliance, similar to NATO, is made up of 10 nations, including Russia, India, China, Egypt, Brazil, South Africa, Iran, Ethiopia and the United Arab Emirates.
The summit was held to demonstrate Moscow’s strength despite Western sanctions and its conflict in Ukraine.
