14 DAY TRIAL // While people in Russia are protesting against the recent election results in the Triumfalnaya Square in Moscow, those who favor the current government launched a bot attack on Twitter, posting national slogans with the #триумфальная (Triumfalnaya) hashtag until they managed to block the original message feed that had the same hashtag.
Trend Micro researchers monitored the attack and they report that the bots posted at an incredible rate of 10 messages per second.
Like in many of these protests, the individuals that took part in the movement were using Twitter to transmit information from the square to those who were at home.
Even if it’s not certain if the attack was state-funded, it’s clear that the hackers launched the operation to silence the anti-government protestors, which comes to prove again that social media is useful on one hand, but on the other, it can always be used to launch some malicious operation.