Russian Cyber Army Hits Bulgarian University
The Russian Cyber Army has just announced a DDoS attack on the Paisii Hilendarski University of Plovdiv, furthering its continuous cyber-warfare on neighboring countries.
- The hacker group announced the attack on their Telegram channel, showing that the university’s website was inaccessible
- This is one of the first, if not the first attack on Bulgaria that we know of, showing the group’s ever-expansive tactics
- The Russian Cyber Army is suspected to be funded by the Russian government
- The hacker group has attacked several countries around the world, including Estonia, France, Georgia, Germany, Kyrgyzstan, Poland, Romania, South Korea, Ukraine, the US, and Venezuela
The Russian Cyber Army seems to be politically-motivated, for the most part, since they launch DDoS attacks almost exclusively.
And they seem to target Ukrainian allies ever since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war. But they’ve been around for much longer than the war, though.
It’s currently unknown whether the Paisii Hilendarski University of Plovdiv has restored its web services or if they’re still unavailable.
So far, we don’t know anything else about the attack other than its political affiliation.
History of the Russian Cyber Army
The Russian Cyber Army, which has been conflated with the Russian secret services, has been launching attacks ever 2007 when they attacked Estonia.
Other attacks include:
- French broadcasting service TV5Monde in 2015
- The website of the Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, in 2008
- Organizing a cyber-theft from the German Parliamentary Commitee investigating the NSA spying scandal in 2015
- The two main ISPs in Kyrgyzstan in 2009
- A disinformation campaign on Facebook in Poland in 2019 going back three years
- Multiple Romanian military, banking, government, and mass-media websites in 2022
- The 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea in 2018
- The Ukrainian government systems through the Ouroboros cyber-weapon in 2014
- Disrupting the Ukrainian presidential elections in 2014
- The Runrun.es Estonian website in 2019
We know with a great deal of certainty that the Russian Cyber Army is politically motivated and seems to attack Russia’s perceived enemies.
This became evident after the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine war when the cyber actors targeted multiple NATO countries who criticized Russia.
It’s expected that the Russian Cyber Army will continue attacking European and NATO countries who are in support of Ukraine.
It should also be noted that Russia’s sponsorship of the hacker group is purely speculation, though a rather promising one, given expert opinion and discoveries.
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