Hacktivists around the world in support of Ukraine are targeting a portal that is crucial for Russian alcohol distribution.
Ukraine’s unofficial army of hackers are focussing their efforts on making alcohol distribution to Russia as difficult as possible.
So how are they doing it? Well, the process is a lot more complex than just buying all the vodka so there’s none left for the motherland.
The process is something known as a distributed denial of service (DDoS), which overwhelms a website or portal with an unserviceable amount of traffic, and making stupid requests so real customers are never served.
And it looks like this particular attack was a success, with multiple Russian media outlets reporting that many alcohol distributers were unable to access the EGAIS (ЕГАИС) portal.
“Due to a large-scale failure, factories cannot accept tanks with alcohol, and customers, stores, and distributors, can not receive finished products that have already been delivered to them,” an anonymous Russian alcohol supply worker told Vedomosti.
As a result, alcohol shipments to Russia have been disrupted, which could likely result in shortages of vodka, wine, and pretty much every other type of alcohol.
For such effective results, the organisation of the cyber attacks are actually pretty simple. The Ukrainian government usually selects a target, and they simply post a link in a Telegram channel, encouraging volunteers to hit up the website.
Much more effective than Gen Z’s efforts to convince Vladimir Putin not to invade Ukraine via his Instagram comment sections.
