DDoS attack shuts down major ticket sale on Russia’s Pobeda Airlines website

Russian budget Pobeda Airlines said on Monday its website came under a DDoS-attack during a major sale of its flight tickets.

“A serious DDoS-attack has been recorded,” a spokesman for the airline said, commenting on reports that its website was down on Monday. “At 14.15 our IT department registered a powerful DDoS-attack. But within an hour the website will resume operations. After the resumption, our specialists will carry out an investigation and find out who had masterminded the attack.”

The low-cost airline promised to launch a major sale of its flight tickets at 14.00 to all directions at a price of at least 500 rubles ($7.62). At about that time the airline’s website went down.

The airline planned on selling more than 200,000 tickets with the flight date from October 27 until the end of the winter flights’ season.

According to Pobeda, last year some 400,000 tickets were sold out at a price of between 499 rubles and 999 rubles ($15.22).