“Meduza” reported on an unprecedented attack by the authorities on the publication

The publication “Meduza” reported that in February and March 2024, the Russian authorities launched an unprecedented attack on the infrastructure of the publication. It is noted that the pressure increased simultaneously with the murder of politician Alexei Navalny and a few weeks before the Russian presidential elections.

Since the middle of February, the “mirrors” of the publication have been blocked every 10-20 minutes, previously this happened approximately once every two weeks. As “Meduza” writes, the site is increasingly exposed to DDoS-attacks, there are also attempts to break the payment system for accepting donations – data of stolen bank cards are entered into it in order to force banks to refuse cooperation.

In 2024, the editors discovered an abnormal increase in subscriptions to the publication’s Telegram channel. According to “Meduza”, this was done in order to then complain en masse that the content allegedly does not comply with the rules of the platform. Pressure on the publication’s journalists also increased: the number of phishing requests increased, Google warned about hacking requests and spam attacks.

“And although we have no direct evidence, we consider this attack to be an attempt to completely eliminate Medusa (another, but quite violent one). This is an expensive contract killing: the authorities, organizations associated with them and hackers are ready to spend a colossal amount of resources to destroy our infrastructure “, the statement of the publication says.

According to the editors, the current attack is part of a series of events (local shutdowns of the Internet, blocking without registration, attempts to disrupt the work of messengers), which look like preparations for carpet blocking of the Internet in Russia at the level of all possible platforms and communication channels.