Russia Blames Cyberattack for Telegram, WhatsApp Outage

AFP/APP

Moscow: Messaging services Telegram and WhatsApp experienced a significant outage in Russia on Wednesday, according to the country’s media regulator, Roskomnadzor.

The regulator attributed the disruption to a cyberattack.

Users reported a surge in server connection issues starting around 2 pm Moscow time (1100 GMT), as indicated by monitoring websites.

Roskomnadzor stated that the “large-scale disruption” caused by the distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack targeting Russia’s telecom operators was mitigated within an hour, and normal service was restored.