The Russian video platform Rutube, which wants to be a competitor of the American giant YouTube, was inaccessible on Tuesday, the victim of “the biggest cyberattack in its history”, announced the company in a press release.
“We have indeed faced the biggest cyberattack in the history of RUTUBE,” reads the statement posted on Telegram, stressing that restoring access to the platform “will take longer than the engineers initially thought. “.
A black screen appeared on the Rutube.ru site on Tuesday morning, accompanied by the description in white characters “Maintenance work is in progress. The site has been attacked. Currently, the situation is under control. User data is saved”.
According to Rutube, the site has been inaccessible since Monday, the day when Russia celebrated with great fanfare May 9 marking the 1945 victory over the Nazis, in particular by justifying its invasion of Ukraine.
Rutube attributes the attack to the same hackers who have “constantly attacked the sites of Russian public institutions for the past two months”, after the outbreak of the Russian offensive on February 24.
On Monday, the Ukrainian media also reported, with supporting photos, a hacking of the broadcasting systems of the Russian television channels MTS, NTV-Plus, Rostelecom and Winx to display the message “The blood of thousands of Ukrainians and hundreds of their children killed is on your hands. Television and the authorities lie. No to war”.
A long text denouncing the “bloody and absurd” Russian military intervention in Ukraine was also published Monday morning by two journalists from the Lenta.ru news site, considered loyal to the Russian authorities, before being quickly removed. .
“We are now looking for work, lawyers and perhaps political asylum,” said its authors, Egor Poliakov and Alexandra Miroshnikova.
In March, Marina Ovsiannikova, an employee of the Pervy Kanal, made a name for herself by appearing live on Russia’s most-watched television news, on this national channel, with a sign criticizing Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine and denouncing the “propaganda” in his favor from the media controlled by the power.
Images of this gesture have gone around the world, many Internet users hailing an act of “extraordinary courage”, in a context of repression of any critical voice in Russia.