Websites which revealed violations in Russia’s legislative polls were targeted in a mass hacking attack Sunday their operators said was aimed at preventing the exposure of mass election fraud.
Popular Russian radio station Moscow Echo and election monitoring group Golos said their websites were the victims of massive cyber attacks, while several opposition news sites were 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.
Golos said it was the victim of a similar “distributed denial of service” (DDoS) attack, while several other opposition news sites were down. The Moscow Echo is popular among the liberal opposition although it is owned by state gas giant Gazprom.
After the close of polls on Sunday, the Moscow Echo website was working again but the Golos website was still inaccessible.
The rest is up for you to read via AFP. I’m not the only one to think that this is the kind of thing that could come out of any political conspiracy thriller, right?
