Russian Embassy in London hit by a DDoS attack

The Russian embassy in London was hit by a distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) over the weekend. According to a Tweet posted by the Embassy:

Our website is likely to have been brought down by a DDoS attack. But its mirror http://www.rusemborguk.ru/ is up and running.

The attack was later on confirmed by a press release issued by the Embassy:

Between 9 and 12 September 2011 the website of the Russian Embassy in London www.rusemb.org.uk repeatedly became unreachable. The nature of the disruptions, as well as our further communication with the hosting provider provided evidence of a DDoS attack against the server where the website is hosted. The Embassy responded by creating a “mirror” website www.rusemborguk.ru to satisfy the demand for information on the eve of PM David Cameron’s visit to Moscow. The website has since then been fully restored. The Embassy requested the British authorities to investigate the incident.

The attack came right before the Prime Minister David Cameron visit to Moscow, the first visit by a British leader to Moscow since the 2006 killing in London of a Kremlin critic.

The attacks appear to have been outsourced to a vendor of DDoS for hire services, and the political sentiment is pretty evident.

What do you think? Who was behind the DDoS attacks?

TalkBack.