MOSCOW, September 17. /TASS/. Russia’s ruling United Russia party said on Friday all of its digital services came under attacks on the first election day. All attacks were repelled, with no serious damage done.
"Four parallel attacks were repelled in the first part of the day. There was an attempt to adapt to our IT department’s countermeasures," Sergei Pimenov, deputy secretary of the party’s general council, told journalists.
According to Pimenov, one of the attacks’ targets was blocking domain names servicing the party’s websites. Apart from that, hackers tried to load network channels with spam traffic. "Nearly 10,000 hacker addresses were blocked during the first part of the attack on the United Russia official website, and nearly 27,000 - during the second part," he said. "Such activity means that there were attempts to block the site."
He said that all attacks are tackled by the party’s own cybersecurity systems and by "specialized partner organizations and our communications operators responsible for BGP-activation of the autonomous system, and data centers."
The party’s press service said also that the number of attacks on United Russia information systems and resources had increased six-fold during last week.
Elections to the 8th Russian State Duma (lower house) are scheduled for September 19, 2021, known as the Single Voting Day. The balloting process will span across three days - September 17, 18, and 19. In addition to the State Duma elections, voters will go to the polls to cast ballots for the heads of nine Russian regions (in another three regions local legislatures will elect top executive officials) and in elections for 39 regional parliaments.