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Hackers' attacks on state computer networks increase official

Iran Materials 14 June 2006 15:51 (UTC +04:00)

(RIA Novosti) - Hackers have been attacking computer networks of Russia's state departments and ministries more frequently, but they have all been repelled, a senior law enforcement official said Wednesday.

"Attacks on official Web resources of Russian state bodies are constantly increasing every year," said Viktor Gorbachyov, the head of the Federal Security Service's center for communications security. "This is particularly true of mass attacks, when thousands of simultaneous attempts to break into [sites] are made within a short period of time."

He said hackers based in the United States had attacked the Web site of the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry on April 22 and 10 days later Chinese hackers launched

a 12-hour assault on the Web sites of the Russian Interior Ministry and Foreign Intelligence Service, reports Trend.

He added that, in all, the domestic security service had registered about a million attacks made by hackers in Russia every year, but they were all successfully repelled by protection programs created in cooperation with the service.

Hackers have made several high-profile attacks on Russian web sites in the last year, including one on Russia's first 24-hour English-language television channel, Russia Today, less than two months after it began broadcasting. The channel was temporarily forced off the air in December after hackers tried to break into its computer network.

In the past two years in Russia, databases containing the information of MTS cell phone users, pension fund beneficiaries and Central Bank transactions have been hacked into and sold on the black market.

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