Unparalleled cyber campaign reported by Russian independent media org

Unprecedented cyberattacks were deployed against Russian independent media organization Meduza last month as part of a campaign it noted was aimed at prompting the destruction of its infrastructure, with more severe intrusions expected during the country's elections later this week, reports The Record, a news site by cybersecurity firm Recorded Future.

Such attacks, which have been attributed to the Russian government, involved mounting attempts to obstruct the mirror servers leveraged by Meduza, as well as intensified distributed denial-of-service attacks against the media outlet's main website. Aside from having its payment system sought to be compromised via stolen credit card information in a bid to hinder its cashflow, Meduza also disclosed having its employees subjected to phishing and spam attacks, as well as password reset attempts and explicit threats. While there has been no evidence linking the attacks to Russia, such a cyber campaign was noted by Meduza to be part of the government's efforts to restrict communications, which have been evident in the recent outages experienced by Telegram, WhatsApp, Viber, and YouTube in the country.