Anticorruption Vymir reports bot attack on media outlet's, journalist's Instagram accounts

The Instagram account of Anticorruption Vymir, a media outlet reporting on corruption in the South of Ukraine, has been targeted in a mass bot attack, Anticorruption Vymir NGO director Kateryna Madens reported in a Facebook post.

“We already have our first guesses as to who could be behind this. Our journalist's page was subjected to a similar attack earlier. At the moment, our team's Instagram page had to go private. We already understand what the next steps to expect from the rats are,” Kateryna Madens noted.

Anticorruption Vymir chief editor Olena Kravchenko said in a comment to the Institute of Mass Information representative Valentyna Troyan that this was the first time the media outlet had encountered such cyber pressure.

“The attack began yesterday, bots started crashing the page of our journalist and video news presenter Olha Tsyktor. Olha reacted in time. At that time, we were not yet sure that this was an attack on the media outlet. But today they 'attacked' the Instagram page of Anticorruption Vymir. For now, we have privated the page and our personal accounts,” said Olena Kravchenko.

Kateryna Madens said in a comment to the IMI that the team had an assumption about who was behind the bot attack.

“The fact that it was the Instagram page and the short video host who were targeted greatly narrows the list of suspects. These are, obviously, people featured in the news that were posted on Instagram recently. Over the almost three years of the team’s work, we have had many dissatisfied individuals, which is unsurprising. However, only a few have reacted particularly strongly to our reporting lately,” Madens noted.

Olena Kravchenko added that the website had also seen a slight increase in “suspicious visitors”. IT specialists from friendly media outlets have joined in solving the problem.

“We also continue to contact other experts and involve them in order to prepare for possible next steps by the attackers,” said Kravchenko.

Kateryna Madens says that they received all the information for their reporting from official sources, such as court rulings, the Judicial Power portal, Prozorro, and other open sources.

“And all of these sources are always listed in our articles with links and/or illustrated in screenshots. We always try to give our readers information as completely as possible so that they can see the evidence and therefore trust us. However, all these details, careful analysis and disclosure of documents are inconvenient for the subjects of our articles. So it is expected that the latter will try to put pressure on us by all legal and illegal means,” Madens said.

The website of the media outlet LIGA.net sustained a mass DDoS attack on May 12. The attack targeted the column by strategic communications consultant Nadia Pototska which discusses the value gaps in Ukrainian society in view of the conflict that arose around the blogger Anna Alkhim.