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Russia’s foreign affairs ministry has reportedly suffered an “unprecedented” cyber attack launched by an unknown threat actor.
In a release this week (23 October), Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation spokesperson Maria Zakharova said it postponed a press conference following a “powerful” distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack against the ministry’s infrastructure.
“In view of a powerful DDoS attack against the Foreign Ministry’s Internet platform, we have postponed the press conference until 2:00pm Moscow time,” said Zakharova.
“Specialists are working to restore the functioning of the resources.”
Zakharova added that the ministry regularly experiences cyber attacks but called the latest one “unprecedented in scale”.
It is unclear if the incident resulted in any further malicious activity, such as the exfiltration of data.
The cyber attack coincided with the BRICS summit, the meeting of the BRICS military alliance, taking place from 22 to 24 October in Kazan, Russia.
The military alliance, similar to NATO, is made up of 10 nations, including Russia, India, China, Egypt, Brazil, South Africa, Iran, Ethiopia, and the United Arab Emirates.
The summit was held to demonstrate Moscow’s strength despite Western sanctions and its conflict in Ukraine.