Russian Foreign Ministry suffers “powerful” cyberattack

The Russian Foreign Ministry has reportedly been the victim of an “unprecedented” cyberattack launched by an unknown malicious actor.

In a statement released this week (October 23), Russian Federation Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said she had postponed a press conference following a “powerful” attack by distributed denial of service (DDoS) against the ministry’s infrastructure.

“Due to a powerful DDoS attack against the Internet platform of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, we postponed the press conference until 2 p.m. Moscow time,” Zakharova said.

“Specialists are working to restore the functioning of the resources.”

Zakharova added that the ministry regularly falls victim to cyberattacks, but called the latest one of “unprecedented scale.”

It is unclear whether the incident led to other malicious activities, such as data exfiltration.

The cyberattack coincided with the BRICS Summit, the meeting of the BRICS military alliance, which was being held October 22-24 in Kazan, Russia.

The military alliance, similar to NATO, is made up of 10 countries, including Russia, India, China, Egypt, Brazil, South Africa, Iran, Ethiopia and the United Arab Emirates.

The summit aimed to demonstrate Moscow’s strength despite Western sanctions and the conflict in Ukraine.