Ukrainian hacktivists reportedly disrupted alcohol shipments in Russia after committing distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against a critical online portal, according to local reports.
Alcohol producers and distributors are required by law to register their shipments with the EGAIS portal, loosely translated as the “Unified State Automated Alcohol Accounting Information System.”
However, several entities in the sector told local news site Vedomosti this week that DDoS attacks by Ukrainian hacktivists downed the site on May 2 and 3.
The outage impacted not only vodka distribution but also wine companies and purveyors of other types of alcohol.
Government sources quoted in the report claim that the site is running normally and any excessive waiting times are merely due to heavy demand.
However, one company, Fort, had failed to upload about 70% of invoices to EGAIS due to the outage, according to the report. Its supplies of wine to retail chains and restaurants were apparently disrupted on May 4 due to the incident.
Although delays are likely only to be temporary, the attack forced one firm to stop shipments for a day as warehouses overflowed with products unable to be moved to distribution centers.
According to the report, the domains egais.ru, service.egais.ru and check.egais.ru were listed on the Ukrainian “IT army” Telegram channel.
This is a hacktivist effort coordinated by the Ukrainian government, whereby prominent Russian sites are listed as targets and volunteers are urged to DDoS them.
It has led in the past to the downing of the Moscow Stock Exchange website.
It’s unclear how much damage and disruption the attacks are causing the Russian state, but the initiative offers occasional propaganda value to Kyiv.