The DDOS Attack on Novaya Gazeta

It’s funny how with all these amazingly talented hackers in Russia (who have even crashed Facebook and Twitter), that it is never the Kremlin’s website which gets brought down, but rather Georgian bloggers, Estonian government, and other perceived enemies of the state … including the latest, the government critical newspaper Novaya Gazeta:

Here’s a bit from the AP story:

“Evidently it was not amateurs, not hooligans (that) did this. It is a deliberate act. We can only guess who stands behind this,” he said.

Then he added, ironically, “As you know, we have very many friends.”

A denial-of-service attack simulates millions of people visiting theWeb site at the same time, overloading the server and causing it tocrash. Novaya Gazeta routinely records 250,000 visits per week. Lipskysaid the peak of the attack, last Thursday, saw 1.5 million visits persecond. The site, Novayagazeta.ru, was still down as of late Monday.

Lipsky said the newspaper has yet to hear from the Prosecutor General’s Office, with which it lodged a complaint last week.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said in astatement Monday that it was “deeply dismayed” by the attacks andcalled for a thorough investigation.