Mega hack shuts down Putin’s online state media

Ukrainian-linked hackers hit Russian state broadcaster VGTRK with an “unprecedented” attack, President Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson said Monday. 
In the early hours of Monday morning, all of the company’s online broadcasting and internal services stopped working, including the streaming services of prominent TV and radio channels such as Russia-1 and Russia-24. 
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov expressed support for the Russian broadcasters and said specialists were working to determine who was responsible for the attack on what he called a “critical infrastructure facility.”
State-owned news outlet Gazeta.ru reported that the Ukrainian-linked hacker group “sudo rm -RF” was behind the attack.
The Russian state broadcaster’s press service acknowledged it had been the subject of a hack, but said “no significant damage was caused to the media holding’s operations.”
It added “everything is operating normally” again and that VGTRK specialists were “working to eliminate the consequences of this malicious interference.”
While Kyiv did not officially claim responsibility for the attack, a Ukrainian official provided some more details after being granted anonymity to discuss the matter.
“Ukrainian hackers congratulated Putin on his birthday by carrying out a large-scale attack on the all-Russian state television and radio broadcasting company,” a Ukrainian law enforcement official familiar with the matter told POLITICO.
“Employees complained that all information on the servers has been destroyed, even backup copies, online broadcasting, and internal services do not work, there is no Internet and telephone, connection,” he added.
Veronika Melkozerova contributed to this report.