After the Digital Forensic Center had published the analysis on new bot network in Serbia, which was taken by all domestic, regional but also Chinese and American media, the web sites of DFC, Atlantic Council of Montenegro and To be secure forum were taken down for a short period of time.
Let us remind that the analysis on tweets from March 9 to April 9 revealed 30,000 tweets produced by the accounts in Serbia, with keywords Kina (China) and Srbija (Serbia) in their content. As much as 71.9 per cent of the content originated from bot accounts. A large network of pro-government bot accounts wrote on and praised the Chinese aid, as well as the friendship between the two countries, and amplified the visibility of the tweets by retweeting. Simultaneously, they criticized the EU due to the alleged lack of its help.
It is interesting to note that the hacker attack at our three web sites occurred shortly after Sputnik had published our analysis with a headline: “NATO worries from Podgorica about Belgrade being closer to Beijing than Brussels”.
Additionally, we have seen strong but unsuccessful attacks at our IT infrastructure. With a swift reaction of our team, the websites have been restored again, and a detailed analysis will determine an origin, i.e. a source of the attack.