The websites were unavailable on May 9 due to DDoS attacks, according to news reports. In a tweet, the Russian branch of Anonymous proclaimed that the Kremlin’s website, kremlin.ru, was taken down.
Anonymous said in a Pastebin post that the attacks were to protest the inauguration of President Putin following allegations of vote tampering in the presidential elections.
According to RT.com, the Kremlin press service confirmed its websites were attacked by hackers: “We received threats from Anonymous several days ago but we can’t confirm it’s exactly this group that attacked the Kremlin.ru website. At the moment we can’t establish who’s behind the attack. Unfortunately we live at a time when technology security threats have mounted, but we have the means to resist them.”
Commenting on the attacks, Ash Patel, country manager for UK & Ireland for Stonesoft, said that “with a group such as Anonymous, one can never be certain as to who exactly is behind the cyberattack. For some time now, Anonymous has been attacking the sites of many government bodies and for that reason, there’s no denying that one motivation behind the attack on the Kremlin’s websites is political.”