Telegram and WhatsApp Messengers Briefly Unavailable in Russia

According to the Russian telecoms watchdog, these disruptions were linked to “a DDoS attack against Russian telecommunications operators”.

A “massive failure” affected the Telegram and WhatsApp messaging services in Russia for an hour on Wednesday, August 21, the Russian telecoms regulator Roskomnadzor reported, according to which “an attack” computer science was at the origin of this “incident” rare. The telecoms regulator assured in a press release that these disruptions were linked to “DDoS attack against Russian telecom operators”. DDoS attacks, “by denial of service”are a relatively simple method of crashing a system by overwhelming it with requests. “At 3 p.m. [heure locale]the attack was repelled and services are operating normally”said Roskomnadzor, which did not identify the author of this cyberattack.

But this official version is already being challenged by independent experts. “Roskomnadzor, apparently, tried to block Telegram, and blocking Telegram shakes other resources on the Russian-speaking Internet”Stanislav Shakirov, technical director of Roskomsvoboda, an NGO that fights against digital censorship, reacted to the media Agency. According to the latter, malfunctions have also been noted on Wikipedia, Yandex, VKontakte, and some Russian telecommunications and mobile banking services.

Such blockades, adds Stanislav Shakirov, have already been reported during the riots in Dagestan or during the protests in Yakutia or Bashkiria in January. “Judging from our observations, there is a centralized action”explained Sarkis Darbinyan, from the same NGO. As a reminder, it has been two weeks since YouTube became almost inaccessible in the country, due to slowdowns.