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Usually packed with video content, RuTube's site is currently
black, with a short message reading: "Attention! The site is
undergoing technical work. The site was attacked. At the moment
the situation is under control. User data has been saved."
The attack began on Monday, a major national holiday when Russia
commemorated the Soviet victory over Adolf Hitler and President
Vladimir Putin delivered a speech likening that struggle to the
current war in Ukraine.
"Someone really wanted to prevent RuTube from showing the
Victory Day parade and celebratory fireworks," RuTube said. "It
is not a sin to remember the battles our guys won. The battle
for RuTube continues."
It described the cyber attack as the worst in the site's
history.
In a separate incident on Monday, Russian satellite television
menus were hacked to show viewers in Moscow messages about
events in Ukraine, including "You have blood on your hands",
according to screenshots obtained by Reuters.
The websites of state-owned companies and news websites have
fallen under sporadic hacking efforts since Russia invaded
Ukraine on Feb. 24, often to show information that is at odds
with Moscow's official line on what it calls a "special military
operation".
RuTube said a large team was working to restore the service, and
denied reports it had lost the website's source code.
The long outage goes some way to explaining why Russia has not
yet blocked Alphabet Inc's YouTube, despite repeatedly fining
and warning the U.S. service over its removal of some
state-backed Russian channels and for failing to delete content
Moscow deems illegal.
Russia restricted access to Twitter and Meta Platform's Facebook
and Instagram in early March.
Critics have previously told Reuters that RuTube, despite its
weekly user numbers jumping in early March as other foreign
social media were forced out of the Russian market, still has a
long way to go to rival Google's video product.
(Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Alexandra Hudson)
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