Russia: Hackers target official public tender website

Hackers previously issued a fake notice saying that the Kremlin was up for sale

Hackers have targeted Russia's public contracts website and posted a fake tender offering control of the country for six years, it's reported.

An official-looking notice appeared on the government-run site on Thursday calling for bids to "rule the Russian state and turn a profit for yourself, your friends and your relatives", the Ura.ru news website reports. The mock document has since been removed, but not before several news websites took screenshots. It offered control over the whole of Russia, "a population of 146 million people, lots of oil, gas, forests, land and whatnot".

The post had a clear political bent - for the hefty sum of 50.5 trillion roubles ($860bn; £570bn), the "winning" bidder would take control for six years, the same length as a presidential term, the Newsru website reports. It also described the country as being "burdened" with millions of officials "who also have the right to their share of the income from the Russian Federation".

A group calling itself the Ural Cyber Partisans said in a separate document uploaded to the site that it was behind the hacking, and that selecting Russia's ruler by public tender is "more honest than holding elections with a predictable result". The group is thought to have been behind a similar stunt on the same government website earlier this year. On that occasion a fake notice said the Kremlin was up for sale, in order to raise money for separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine.

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