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A wave of DDoS attacks has been launched following the arrest of Russian-born billionaire Pavel Durov.
Hacktivist groups from around the world, led by Russian hackers, have targeted a raft of French websites with distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks after French authorities arrested Telegram founder Pavel Durov (pictured) on the weekend.
A collective of Russian-speaking hackers known as the Russian Army Cyber Team has targeted the European Court of Human Rights, regional utilities provider Syane, and the National Agency for the Safety of Medicines and Health Products, among many others, under the hashtag #FreeDurov.
“Unfortunately, for Telegram founder Pavel Durov, today is clearly not a good day. He was detained last night and faces (probably trumped-up) charges of various serious crimes,” a spokesperson for the group said on its Telegram channel on Sunday (25 August) after news of the arrest broke (translated by Google Translate).
“As retaliation for the arrest of Durov, our group (we also invite other Russian hacker movements who want to support this initiative to cooperate) is announcing a week of attacks on French Internet portals from today.”
Pro-Palestinian hackers RipperSec also joined the campaign, targeting over half a dozen French universities and educational institutions.
“Hello, this is Hekh, the leader of the hacker group cgpllnet. The guys from RipperSec and I did our job – we hacked and made a mini-attack on several key sites in France. And do you know why? Because they arrested Pavel Durov,” the group’s leader said on – you guessed it – Telegram (translated by Google Translate).
“For what? Because he fights for our freedom online. It’s just the bottom. France decided to play with fire? Okay, we’ll show you what real chaos is.”
While the group usually posts in Arabic, Malay, and English, its activity under the #FreeDurov hashtag has been in Russian.
Other groups operating under the #FreeDurov hashtag include VulcanSec, EvilWeb, GraveNet, and CyberDragon.
However, as is often the case, the disruption caused by these attacks appears to be largely minimal, as many of the sites seen by Cyber Daily are still up and operating as normal – which is typical of most such attacks, which cause a momentary outage before sites come back up.
For instance, the websites of the Council of Europe, the General Directorate of Customs and Indirect Taxes, and Corsica Ferries – all listed as victims by CyberDragon – are all operating normally, though the latter does have CloudFlare DDoS protection in place to check for human traffic.
While French authorities have been tight-lipped over the arrest, it is thought Durov’s detention is related to a lack of moderation of criminal activities – such as hacktivist and ransomware groups – on the messaging app.
David Hollingworth has been writing about technology for over 20 years, and has worked for a range of print and online titles in his career. He is enjoying getting to grips with cyber security, especially when it lets him talk about Lego.
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