This had been widely anticipated, especially as Ukraine had won in 2014 with a song about the 1944 deportation of Crimean Tatars – which, as its performer later admitted, was also a direct reference to the invasion of Crimea. It has used Eurovision to try to improve its international reputation its 2015 entry – a year after the invasion of Crimea – was a song about peace and acceptance.Īpart from taking revenge on the EBU, the key goal of the 2022 intervention, which involved distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks that sought to overload websites with traffic in order to make them inaccessible, was to prevent a Ukrainian victory. Russia became a regular participant in the contest in the 2000s and quickly reached a high profile, becoming one of the most successful entrants in the competition’s history.Īs host in 2009, Russia spent over 30 million euros (a record at the time) on putting on a lavish event, conveying the image of a prosperous country in the middle of a global financial crisis.
Given the importance of Eurovision in Russia’s state branding (along with other post-communist countries, it used it strategically to build a positive national image), it is easy to see why the European Broadcasting Union’s (EBU) decision to exclude it from the competition after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine may have triggered an attack. While these collectives are not officially state-controlled, they are supportive of the invasion and motivated by the prospect of revenging perceived offences against Russia. KillNet is the most active among a pro-Russia network of hacktivist communities that expanded rapidly in the wake of the Kremlin’s all-out war against Ukraine. Politicians’ fears were stoked by a near-incident at last year’s contest, where the voting system and performances were targeted by the KillNet hacker collective and its subgroup, Legion – an attack Italian police ultimately fended off. Why would such an attack serve the Kremlin’s interests and what may its impact on the UK be? While concertgoers have been reassured that risks to their physical safety remain low, MPs recently raised concerns related to cybersecurity specifically, the potential of the contest becoming the target of Russia-affiliated hacker groups. In preparation for this year’s Eurovision Song Contest in Liverpool, the host city made plans to implement the largest security operation in its history. Rozi Harsanyi assesses the possibility and potential implications of a pro-Russia hacktivist cyberattack on this year’s Eurovision Song Contest.
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