Mikhail Kozachkov

Affiliated media: Telegram channel Kozachkov offside , Journalist

Incident date: October 3, 2023

Attack type:

• Cyber-, DDoS, and hacker attack on a media outlet

Who attacked: Unknown sources

Source: Telegram channel Kozachkov offside

Location: Kazakhstan, Almaty, Almaty

Additional information:

On the night of October 2 to 3, the author of the Telegram channel Kozachkov offside Mikhail Kozachkov noticed a strange growth in the number of subscribers. By the morning of October 3, the number of subscribers reached 138,000 people and continued to grow. The journalist suggested that this might be due to bots and someone could have dispatched them for the purpose of blocking the channel. The Telegram channel has been forced to disable comments and run a bot that removes bots. «Someone is trying very hard to put bots into my channel. In the first 24 hours — 150 thousand, then 40, in the last 24 hours — about 15. And this nonsense continues. Tonight, 30 thousand bots were added to the channel’s chat at once and they started posting pornographic pictures en masse, obviously to complain to the Telegram administration and get the Telegram channel blocked. We are fighting this influx and every morning we delete new users», — Kozachkov said on October 5.