Attack Temporarily Disrupts WhatsApp and Telegram in Russia

Users of the applications "Telegram" and "WhatsApp" in Russia encountered issues accessing them on Wednesday due to a malfunction that the government's communications watchdog attributed to a "denial of service" attack, according to Reuters. The watchdog stated, "The attack has been repelled, and the messaging networks are back to normal operation." Russian media reported that other sites affected included "Wikipedia," "Skype," and the social media platform "Discord." The service disclosed in a statement that "the outage is related to a denial of service attack on Russian telecommunications companies," without specifying a possible perpetrator. The disruption of the widely popular messaging applications in Russia on Wednesday followed weeks after Russian internet monitoring services announced a significant outage on the video hosting site "YouTube," amid increasing criticism of the platform by Russian authorities.