have been in contact to tell us they are currently under the largest DDOS attack they have ever experienced, apparently targeting one Russian user, Reggamortis1.

Of course, Russia is yet again in the middle of another protests, timed to concur with the inauguration of returning Russian president Vladimir Putin, and the Reggamortis1 channel had reportedly been broadcasting a large protest (on this Russian site) near Moscow's Kitay-gorod subway stop.

Ustream believe the DDOS attack started around 5.30am ET (2.30pm Moscow Time), and involves thousands of IP addresses, largely from Russia, Kazakhstan, and Iran. The attack has taken down much of Ustream for the day, though the site is fighting to come back online at the time of writing.

“Ustream is experiencing a denial of service attack from around the world, specifically targeting a Russian citizen journalist’s Ustream channel. This is the third DDOS attack in the last few months, specifically targeting Russian citizen journalists on Ustream," Ustream CEO Brad Hunstable said in a statement.

“This is a actively managed attack of a scale we have never seen that continues to change and iterate as we counter.”

For those following the Russian protests, it might not be a surprise to see a DDOS attack targeting a protest. Earlier this year reports surfaced that suggested Putin's youth movement, Nashi, was behind hundreds of negative comments on pro-opposition blogs. A blog platform popular in Russia, LiveJournal, appeared to go down in DDOS attack before last December's Duma election.

An warning email sent to Ustream (translated from Russian here) suggests that Nashi may well be behind this attack as well:

WARNING! Hi, administration ustream.tv. I am a citizen of the Russian Federation I hasten to inform you that your site is already broadcast three days of riots taking place in Moscow. Russia’s actively monitors these events through your site. this is the only source of communication, through which we learn how Putin is killing our citizens. Get to the point. Your site does not currently work only because of these bastards -> kremlin.ru and nashi.su. These people are under the leadership of Putin deprive people of information and trying to hide the chaos unfolding in the capital of Russia and conduct DDOS attack on ustream.tv. I on behalf of the citizens of Russia propose to redirect all of these scum, bots that perform an attack againstkremlin.ru. Help us, just because of your translations, we can know about Russian President Putin's lawlessness and riot.



Ustream says it is the world’s largest live streaming platform with 55 million unique visitors a month. It's become ubiquitous at protests around the world, allowing protestors (be then in Moscow or New York City) to easily stream video from their phone.

GigaOm reports that Bambuser, a similar service, is also receiving an unusual amount of traffic that may also be linked to a DDOS attack.

UPDATE: UStream tell us that as of 10:42am PST the site is almost back to 100%.