The Russian authorities previously summoned the US ambassador to demand that Washington stop interfering in the general election in the country taking place between 17 and 19 September.
The online voting system in Russia suffered denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on 17 September coming from IP addresses registered in the US, Germany, and Ukraine, the Russian Ministry of Digital Development, Communications, and Mass Media has stated. The attacks came as both in-person and online general election voting kicked off in Russia.
The ministry said there have been two waves of attacks: the first targeted the election monitoring system and was launched at 8:00 a.m. local time (5:00 GMT), while the second targeted the voting authentication system and was spotted at 10:36 a.m. local time (7:36 GMT).
Over 50% of the mass requests used in the DDoS attacks to take down the online services by overwhelming their capacity to process them, came from US IPs. Over 25% came from German IPs and 5% more from Ukraine. The ministry did not disclose other sources behind the DDoS attacks, but said that they were definitely organised and aimed to thwart the holding of elections in Russia.