Belarus under hacking attack

“Only three thousand web site hosted by HOSTER.BY, including TUT.BY were affected," Yury Ziser, director of TUT.BY internet portal told the European Radio for Belarus.



Yury Ziser told us that the DDoS-attack was launched against the Moscow-based paid hosting provider HOSTER.BY.

Юрый Зісер: “Since TUT.BY was also affected, tens of thousands of users were unable to log into their mail accounts, forums and other services within four hours. It was possible to open TUT.BY and even read the news, but it was impossible to use the e-mail”.

Yury Ziser says the attack is still under way but poses no threat to the Belarusian web sites.

Yury Ziser: “The attack has not faded away. It is still there. But it seems that everything is normal. It is not a threat anymore since Saturday”.

The sites that could be not accessed for four hours have incurred material losses. The biggest lost that could have taken place is worth several million US dollars.

Yury Ziser: “One big client -- a company that ships oil -- could have been hit hard. The company was expecting a conract worth milions of dollars. But it seems to have avoided the worst”.

The European Radio for Belarus also talked to Ihar Parmon, a deputy chief of the IT crime task force at the Interior Ministry of Belarus. His staff have searched for the hackers since January 5, although no formal complaints were filed by the victims of the attack.

Ihar Parmon: “Nobody filed their statements, because the crime was committed on the territory of the Russian Federation. The server which was attacked is based in Moscow. Even if someone filed a complaint, we would have refused it because the crime took place in Moscow.

 
Euroradio: Why are you dealing with it then?

Ihar Parmon: We are dealing with any web-based crimes. We have a suspicion that competitors could be associated with this attack… Why did they target  TUT.BY? We are probing. It is stil too early, but we have tracked down some traces”.

Ihar Parmon voiced to the European Radio for Belarus his assumptions about who could need to break down the Belarusian web sites.

Ihar Parmon: “They could be Russian competitors. This could be an attack to demonstrate their capabilities in order to extort money later. So, we are still checking why they targated the Belarusian service”.

Yury Ziser, director of TUT.BY, also reflected on what could have happened of their site used the services of the Belarus-based hosting provider.

Yury Ziser: “If we had reasonable tariffs for traffic, etc., we would not need to keep everything in Moscow. If we were based in Minsk, the attack would have been unsuccessful because the channel is too narrow. On the other hand, being Moscow-based helped us shield off this attack quickly. It would not be easy here, because there is one channel here, while there are any channels in Moscow”.