Affiliated media: ProTenge, Telegram channel

Incident date: January 21, 2024

Attack type:

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

Who attacked: Unknown sources

Source: ProTenge

Location: Kazakhstan, Almaty, Almaty

Additional information:

On January 21, the Telegram channel of the ProTenge project was attacked by bots — about 15 thousand new accounts subscribed to the channel on Sunday. Editor-in-chief Jamilya Maricheva told about it on Monday, January 22. «While other channels pay for fake subscriptions to artificially scale the channel’s audience, we are being given these bots as part of the long-running programme ’Cyberattacks on Kazakhstani journalists’», — the journalist wrote. The editorial office does not consider readers’ assumption that new subscribers are people who came by recommendation (tag) from other popular channels. According to ProTenge’s observation, in such a case, there would be from a thousand to one and a half thousand accounts subscribed, and 15 thousand subscribers is abnormal and unrealistic.