Russia experienced one of its largest internet outages, with many sites and applications using Russian .ru domains unavailable for several hours on the night of January 30th.
Hundreds of websites and services are no longer accessible, including the Yandex search engine, Sberbank, VKontakte social media platforms, and state services.
People across the country were affected by power outages. According to Russian state news agency RBC, most of the incidents were reported in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Krasnodar Krai, Bashkortostan and Kostroma Oblast.
Russia’s Digital Ministry said the problem was caused by a technical issue related to a set of DNS protocol extensions.
At around 10:20 p.m. local time, the ministry announced that the issue had been resolved, but some DNS issues may persist until updated data is distributed throughout the Domain Name System.
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty noted that Russian authorities have long announced plans to forward Russian internet users to domestic DNS servers.
On the night of January 30th, the Military Intelligence Service of Ukraine (HUR) announced that it had shut down the servers of the Russian Ministry of Defense. This is just the latest cyber attack reported in Russia recently, which has also included hacking of Russian scientific research centers and IT companies.
Ukraine was also targeted in similar attacks.one of the most common devastating Following the strike, Russian hackers targeted Ukrainian telecommunications provider Kyiv Star, causing a nationwide communications outage in December last year.