Amidst the Russian invasion on Ukraine, hacker collective Anonymous a day after the attack on Friday early morning disabled several Russian government websites including the state-controlled Russia Today news service.
Anonymous collective announced they had launched cyber operations that briefly took down RT.com, as well as the websites of the Kremlin, the Russian government and the Russian defence ministry websites
According to a report, RT.com confirmed the attack took place, saying it slowed some websites down while taking others offline for "extended periods of time".
RT's coverage of the situation in Ukraine has been overwhelmingly from a pro-Russian perspective, showing fireworks and cheerful celebrations in the newly occupied territories.
Internet security expert Robert Potter said the distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack used involved multiple systems flooding a targeted website so that no other traffic could get through.
"It's like trying to run five people through a door at the same time," he said.
DDoS attacks are considered easy to mount and easy to defend against.
"DDoS is rarely more than inconvenient," Mr Potter said.
Anonymous is a decentralised collective without hierarchy or leadership and has been known to take on a wide range of issues, with previous attacks targeting the CIA, Islamic State and the Church of Scientology.
Earlier this week, Russian cyber forces mounted DDoS attacks on the websites of several Ukrainian banks and government departments.
The government of Ukraine has asked volunteers from the "hacker underground" to help protect critical infrastructure and spy on Russian troops.
Meanwhile, Russia pressed its invasion of Ukraine to the outskirts of the capital Friday after unleashing airstrikes on cities and military bases and sending in troops and tanks from three sides in an attack that could rewrite the global post-Cold War security order.
