The website of the Kharkiv-based news outlet Nakypilo was targeted by hackers on 5 April. The attack was carried out from Russian territory, reports Yulia Napolska, the Institute of Mass Information representative in Kharkiv oblast and Nakypilo production director.
Napolska says that the attack was carried out through the website’s order form: all notifications were sent to her email inbox and watch. The team received 500 requests within two hours and over 2 thousand in a day.
Yulia Napolska says that Russia has been repeatedly attacking the news outlet and trying to make the website difficult to access.
Nakypilo chief editor Olena Leptuha said in a comment to IMI that the 5 April attack was targeted the comment form, with about 100 requests recorded.
She said that the attackers had used typical SQL-injection queries that are used to search for vulnerabilities in websites. All these attempts were thwarted; they did not affect the website’s work and no data were leaked or compromised.
Leptuha added that the administrator’s notification system had been triggered during the attack, prompting him to block the Russian IP addresses behind the attack.
“Our comments are disabled, but the attackers tried to target the old service records, which still had a feature for submitting comments for moderation,” Olena Leptuha said.
The website of the Kharkiv-based news outlet Nakypilo was targeted by hackers once again late on 14 November 2025. The attackers tried to crack users’ passwords.