Russian hackers discuss targeting the Eurovision song contest

A pro-Russian hacker group discussed a cyber attack to hinder Ukraine's chances in the song contest.

A hacker group known as Killnet discussed targeting the voting system of the Eurovision semi-finals. Killnet primarily employs distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks to intimidate victims.

"You can't vote online. Perhaps our DDoS attack is to blame for everything," said a message on the group's official Telegram channel.

The message linked to data on several timed out servers all over Europe. The timestamp indicates that downtime coincides with the first semi-finals of Eurovision, where Ukrainian folk-rap band Kalush Orchestra performed.

However, Ukraine qualified for the Eurovision finals despite the alleged attack. On the other hand, Russia was barred from the event, boasting a viewership of 200 million, due to Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.

Killnet later published another ambiguous message claiming there's no point in attacking the song contest further yet assessing the group could cause harm if it wanted.

"Let's send you 10 billion requests and add votes to some other country. What will you do about it?," Killnet boasted in Telegram.

The pro-Russian group has been on a spree recently. Government websites in Italy, Romania, Germany, as well as websites in Czechia, Latvia, and elsewhere were under Killnet's cyber fire.

Competing hacker groups launched numerous attacks after Russia invaded Ukraine. Anonymous, Ukraine's IT Army, Hacker Forces, and many other hacktivist groups started targeting Russia's state-owned enterprises and businesses.

Meanwhile, prominent ransomware cartel Conti, as well as groups like Killnet and others, expressed allegiance to Moscow.

According to the United Nations, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has created the 'fastest-growing refugee crisis in Europe since World War II.' Over 11 million people were displaced due to the conflict, with over 5.9 million fleeing the country.

Witness testimonies from Ukrainian towns Russian forces have occupied for close to a month point to severe human rights violations and targeted lethal attacks against civilians. Reports of "gross and systematic violations and abuses of human rights" got Russia suspended from the UN Human Rights Council.