RT’s parent organization targeted by hackers

Rossiya Segodnya withstood a major cyberattack on Thursday, the technical service of RT’s parent organization has said.

Resources associated with RIA Novosti news agency and Sputnik International were targeted, among others, according to a statement. The attack used approximately 1 million bots and was directed through IP addresses registered in Asia and Latin America.

The attempt to overwhelm the Russian media network’s infrastructure started at around 11:00am Moscow time. At its peak, cybersecurity specialists blocked 720,000 IP addresses by sending malign requests to Rossiya Segodnya servers.

Russian Public broadcaster VGTRK was hit by a similar cyber operation on Monday; some of its work was reportedly disrupted as a result.

The most recent distributed denial of service attack on Rossiya Segodnya took place in 2022, according to RIA Novosti.