Nashi Suspected for DDoS Attacks against Kommersant Website

Georgy Ivanov, Head of Kommersant's Legal Service, accepted that the organization's Website hit by organized Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks due to false customer queries created by virus-infected computer, as reported by c news on March 13, 2008.

According to Ivanov, attacks started on the newspaper's Website in the first week of March 2008 and the Website remained non-working for most of March 13, 2008.

Currently, if anyone log in to the Website, he will come across an unusual process of constant change in the address of the home page. However, a browser should get standard index html pages like 'page-ed.html', 'page-c.html' and other pages. As a result, the Web traffic to the home page has fallen down.

Anton Nosik, Head of Sup's blog service, said that such attacks against Kommersant Website would continue. Hackers are not sparing other Websites such as National Bolshevik Party, Movement against illegal Emigration, other Russian Coalition, and the online resources of Estonian government. Anton blamed one political party for the recent attacks and criticized law enforcement agencies for reluctance to conduct investigation, as reported by c news on March 13, 2008.

Meantime, security experts said that DDoS attacks purposely targeted at Kommersant site following aggressive campaign against an independent minded daily which showed young people distributing toilet papers on the street.

Ivanov also said that despite increasing DDoS attacks against the Kommersant Website, they have not mentioned Nashi in complaint, as there is no legal base to do so, as reported by The MoscowTimes on March 14, 2008.

Pro-Kremlin youth association Nashi is being alleged for the attack on the Kommersant Website and the toilet roll campaign. However, a spokeswoman of the group, Kristina Potupchik, called the suspicion baseless in both the cases, as reported by The MoscowTimes on March 14, 2008.

Actually, Potupchik and many other senior members of Nashi group started visiting Russian blogosphere and made elaborate plans early this month to disrupt the operations of newspaper through DDoS attack. This brought Nashi group under suspicion.

According to latest news, a Russian daily, Reporters without Borders, is supporting Moscow-based Kommersant because it is also at the target of attackers' campaign.

Related article: NZ Researcher Uncovers Hacking Techniques Against Vista

» SPAMfighter News - 3/22/2008