Other Russia Websites Under Attack

As of this moment, the opposition websites Kasparov.ru and Namarsh.ru are under a DOS hacker attack barrage of 32 Mbps, rendering them unavailable to the public. This is far from the first time this has happened. In this new BusinessWeek article, Garry Kasparov writes about the increasing importance of the internet in our organization due to the the Kremlin monopoly of traditional media. An excerpt:

[T]here remains the constant threat of being jailed for “extremist speech,” the Kremlin’s Orwellian justification for suppressing criticism. Individuals have been criminally charged for Internet posts. The security forces and their allies engage in online harassment as well. Our Web sites are under constant threat of coordinated hacker attacks, forcing us to look outside Russia’s borders to establish a network that cannot be shut down by the government.

Even if we get our message out, we cannot make people read it, or care, or act. Our mission, then, is to present a message so powerful that it cannot be ignored. In this fight, the Internet is our best weapon to let the world know what’s really going on behind Putin’s 21st century Iron Curtain.

These attacks are similar in nature (and source, we don’t doubt) to those perpetrated against Estonian websites during the Russia-Estonia row over the WW II memorial.

While we have great respect for the technical skills that have made Russian hackers famous and infamous worldwide, we do wonder why such a typically anti-establishment crowd is so eager to do the bidding of the Kremlin. Is the cult of Putin’s “strong Russia at any cost” really so powerful? These hackers should realize they will eventually be locked up by the same people in the government who are protecting them now. The Kremlin “Matrix” will grow until it has no use for any Russian “Neos.”