He was supposed to speak at 2 p.m. local time, but he finally arrived at the desk at 3 p.m. Vladimir Putin saw his speech postponed by an hour, due to a cyberattack targeting the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), where he was to speak.

Disrupted accreditation system

Committed in the form of a denial of service attack, the attack targeted online access systems to the plenary session. Multiple requests have been sent to the computer accreditation system since the evening before, paralyzing it momentarily.

The attendee database and badge admission system have been decommissioned. Specialists are working to eliminate the problem, said Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for the Kremlin, reports the American media, Bloomberg.

Comprehensive measures will be taken to limit the effects of these cyberattacks. Everything will be put in place and access will be ensured for all those who must attend the plenary session”, promised the spokesperson at the time.

A denial of service attack consists of establishing a multitude of artificial connections to targeted servers, in order to saturate them and put them out of service. This type of attack has the specificity of being technically accessible while having significant short-term effects. Denial of service attacks has notably increased since the start of the conflict between Ukraine and Russia.