Novaya Gazeta Europe website hit by multiple cyberattacks

Novaya Gazeta Europe’s website is being targeted by an ongoing distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack that began several days ago, resulting in temporary disruptions to the availability of online content, Novaya Europe’s IT team confirmed on Wednesday.

Targeted attacks on Novaya Gazeta Europe’s website infrastructure began on Monday, and by Wednesday morning, at least three major attacks had been detected, with up to 12 million requests per minute recorded on Tuesday evening.

The cyber attacks, which were distributed from multiple data centres, include a pool of IP addresses associated with the government of North Korea, an increasingly close ally of the Kremlin, which has blocked Novaya Gazeta Europe’s website in Russia and classified the outlet as an “undesirable organisation”.

A malicious attempt to disrupt normal traffic to a targeted server, service or network by overwhelming the target or its surrounding infrastructure with a flood of online traffic, DDoS attacks are frequently used by Russian hacker groups to target opposition NGOs and media outlets, as well as foreign governments deemed to be “unfriendly” to Russia.

DDoS attacks generally utilise multiple compromised computer systems as sources of attack traffic to create what is effectively an unexpected log jam that prevents regular traffic from arriving at its destination.

“During an active DDoS attack, Novaya Gazeta Europe’s website is rendered briefly inaccessible as our team activates additional protection protocols to restore access to the website,” Novaya Gazeta Europe’s IT team said in a statement on Wednesday, asking readers who find themselves unable open the homepage to “try again in 20–30 minutes, the usual time our team needs to overcome each attack.”