Several Belarusian websites hit by DdoS attacks on Freedom Day

On March 25, the Free­dom Day cel­e­brat­ed by the Belaru­sian pro-democ­ra­cy move­ment, sev­er­al Belaru­sian web­sites, includ­ing inde­pen­dent media out­lets, report­ed being sub­ject­ed to cyber­at­tacks.

Image cre­at­ed by BAJ using Gem­i­ni

In the morn­ing, Nasha Niva report­ed a DdoS attack, not­ing that the site might be tem­porar­i­ly unavail­able or users might expe­ri­ence dif­fi­cul­ties open­ing news arti­cles and links.

At mid­day, the offi­cial web­site of Svi­at­lana Tsikhanouskaya was attacked — this was report­ed by Reform.news, cit­ing the words of Franak Via­chor­ka, advis­er to the head of the Unit­ed Tran­si­tion­al Cab­i­net. He said the resource was down for about 15–20 min­utes, but spe­cial­ists man­aged to quick­ly deal with the attack and restore access to the site.

Short­ly after­ward, Reform.news itself suf­fered a DdoS attack, lead­ing to brief serv­er out­ages.

On the evening of March 25, the Medi­a­zona.Belarus web­site came under attack.

“From 5 p.m. (Min­sk time), the site received a sharp spike in requests — in a short time their num­ber reached 10 mil­lion. We have strength­ened our defens­es, so users may tem­porar­i­ly see addi­tion­al ver­i­fi­ca­tion before the site loads,” the out­let warned.

Screen­shot from a Telegram chan­nel linked to regime pro­pa­gan­dists

Who is behind the attacks remains unknown, but ear­ly on March 25, the authors of pro­pa­gan­da Telegram chan­nels affil­i­at­ed with Belaru­sian secu­ri­ty forces boast­ed about attacks on inde­pen­dent media sites and Svi­at­lana Tsikhanouskaya’s web­site. “Good hack­ers con­grat­u­lat­ed the fugi­tive extrem­ists on the hol­i­day,” one of them wrote, adding that “the action includes send­ing sev­er­al resources on vaca­tion.”

DDoS (Dis­trib­uted Denial of Ser­vice) is a cyber­at­tack in which a large num­ber of devices simul­ta­ne­ous­ly over­load a ser­vice or web­site with requests to make it inac­ces­si­ble to users.