At the end of last week, a number of pro-Russian Telegram channels and mass media spread the news that the Ukrainian company Uklon launched a function that allows passengers to complain about drivers for “anti-Ukrainian attitude”. After that, the company faced negativity from pro-Russian users and also came under a DDoS attack.
Actually, this feature is not new. In Uklon, they believe that they have become the target of a planned attack by Russians and pro-Russian users due to the fact that they help make meetings at the ZSU. We tell the details.
What happened
It all started with a publication in one of the Russian-language Telegram channels on November 11. The news was picked up by the channel of the odious blogger Oleksiy Arestovych and the infamous Strana.ua mass media.
After that, as reported in Uklon, angry users with a clearly pro-Russian position began to “drain the rating” of Uklon, placing units in marketplaces.
Screenshot: Uklon
Uklon co-founder Vitaly Dyatlenko commented on the situation. According to him, the function of complaining about the “anti-Ukrainian position” is not new – it was launched at the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Russia into Ukraine.
“The complaint about the “anti-Ukrainian position” has existed in our application since the beginning of the full-scale war and was aimed at identifying the DRG. She was repeatedly written about on Twitter and in the media space in general,” said Dyatlenko.
He also reported that on the night of November 12, a DDoS attack was carried out on Uklon.
What are the consequences for Uklon
Dyatlenko considers this case to be a planned propaganda campaign directed against Uklon due to the active support of the Armed Forces (in particular, the company closed a fee of 80 million for the purchase of 3,000 FPV drones in a year). It started, according to his observations, in the evening of November 10. However, there are no significant consequences for the company: hundreds of “units” of the service have only “spoilt Uklon's karma and mood”, comments Dyatlenko.
The DDoS attack did not harm the service either.
“During the full-scale war, we also encountered more powerful DDoS attacks. In this case, there were two waves – the first at 8:00 a.m. on Sunday, the second at 10:00 a.m. – it was more powerful and lasted about three hours. The attack was not localized – most of the traffic came, surprisingly, from the States, Indonesia, Brazil and China. Well, the “swamp” geozone is basically blocked in our country, so they don't attack from there. It was repelled as standard – the platform team worked according to the procedure for responding to similar events. There are no consequences for the product,” Dyatlenko told the editor of AIN.UA.
Vitaly also noted that the number of complaints against drivers for “anti-Ukrainian position” is relatively small – from 0.6% to 2.5% of the total number of complaints. All of them, according to the co-founder of the service, are processed by call center managers personally with the driver.
Why is this important?
A full-scale war with Russia continues and, unfortunately, some support the aggressor in it. Such campaigns, according to Uklon, aim to prevent Ukrainian businesses from supporting the Defense Forces of Ukraine.
“Since we support the Armed Forces and have an active business position, we know about the possibility of additional attacks and are preparing. The service proactively reacts to anomalies and is ready to work with it. Now the number of attacks on the Ukrainian infrastructure in general has greatly increased, and we must be ready to fight for our security on the cyber front as well,” emphasized the co-founder of Uklon.
Dyatlenko also posted in the comments on Facebook a link to the company's latest collection for the purchase of FPV drones for the Armed Forces. In addition, he encouraged users to give the Uklon application “fives” in stores to return the previous rating.
