Russian video hosting RuTube unavailable due to hacker attack. The Village source claims that the service ‘cannot be recovered’

Russian video hosting site RuTube has been unavailable for the second day in a row following a hacker attack. A source of Russian media outlet The Village claims that the service cannot be recovered.

RuTube first reported the attack on the morning of 9 May. The company’s Telegram channel stated that a response team is working to recover access to the service.

On the evening of 9 May, the press service said that this is the biggest cyber attack in the company’s history.

The Village’s source close to the RuTube team said that “the website code was fully deleted” in the attack, which means that the video hosting “cannot be recovered.” According to the source, the company does not know whether the hackers still have access to the system. The video content was not deleted in the attack. The source added that the cyber attack became possible due to an access code leak.

The company later dismissed these reports as false.

“We were targeted by the biggest cyber attack in RuTube history. It’s important to understand that the video hosting contains petabytes of archives and hundreds of servers. The recovery will take more time than our engineers originally thought,” the video service said in a statement.

The RuTube Telegram channel also published a message in Ukrainian addressing Ukrainian digital minister Mykhailo Fedorov and vowing to inform him personally when the website is back up.

“We continue working to recover the platform. This attack has become another reason (we’d like to remind you that on 9 May, we celebrate the day of remembrance, unity and honour) to stick together and support our own. Now, even those who were sceptical of us, support us and hope that we’ll recover the platform as soon as possible. Thank you for the publicity. We also want to say that we could translate our posts from Russian to Ukrainian for you to adhere to the rules of your channel. We promise to inform you exclusively when RUTUBE is back up,” the message reads.

Head of Internet Protection Society Mikhail Klimarev earlier said in an interview with Novaya Gazeta. Europe that RuTube, which was created as an alternative to YouTube in Russia, is not ready yet to replace YouTube if it is blocked in the country.

“If it receives all YouTube traffic right now, RuTube won’t be able to handle it, it will crash,” Klimarev said. Klimarev predicted that Russia might block YouTube in early July.