Russian citizens targeted in Ustream DDoS

Webcast outfits Ustream and Bambuser were knocked offline for hours Wednesday after massive distributed denial of services (DDoS) attacks hit ‘Russian opposition’ broadcasters on each platform.

The attacks came as Russians continued protests in Moscow following the re-election of President Vladimir Putin and his Monday inauguration.

The state-sanctioned "March of Millions" protest in Moscow this Sunday escalated into violence after some protestors clashed with police.

Several Russian news organisations were knocked offline after Sunday's clashes, however Wednesday was the first time non-Russian domains were affected by the unrest.  

Ustream, which remained offline for several hours on Wednesday, claimed its outage was caused by a DDoS attack aimed at “Russian Citizen Journalists", it reported on Twitter.

However, the webcaster's chief executive officer Brad Hunstable told Russian news site Ridus.ru that the attack focussed on a single Russian citizen journalist, dubbed ReggaMortis1.

ReggaMortis1's Ustream channel remained offline throughout Wednesday evening.

Hunstable claimed it was the third DDoS attack it had suffered in the past few months "specifically targeting Russian citizen journalists".

The site appeared to come back online at 6pm London time.

Swedish-founded social web broadcaster Bambuser was also intermittently knocked offline Wednesday. 

At about 2pm London time Wednesday, Bambuser reported “experiencing something we believe is a DDoS attack”. Four hours later, it reported remaining online but “still under some load”.   

The attacks on non-Russian domains followed DDoS attacks on several Russian news sites, including Ridus.ru, in the lead-up to Putin’s re-appointment.

The successful takedown of Moscow business news organisation Kommersant forced its chief executive Damian Kudriavstev to explain via Facebook why the site was down.

Street protests in Moscow continued on Wednesday after Sunday's clashes.