Cyberattack Cripples Russian Airline Aeroflot (politico.com) 36
New submitter Pravetz-82 shares a report from Politico: A cyberattack on Russian state-owned flagship carrier Aeroflot caused a mass outage to the company's computer systems on Monday, Russia's prosecutor's office said, forcing the airline to cancel more than 100 flights and delay others. Ukrainian hacker group Silent Crow and Belarusian hacker activist group the Belarus Cyber-Partisans, which opposes the rule of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, claimed responsibility for the cyberattack. Images shared on social media showed hundreds of delayed passengers crowding Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport, where Aeroflot is based. The outage also disrupted flights operated by Aeroflot's subsidiaries, Rossiya and Pobeda. While most of the flights affected were domestic, the disruption also led to cancellations for some international flights to Belarus, Armenia and Uzbekistan.
Silent Crow claimed it had accessed Aeroflot's corporate network for a year, copying customer and internal data, including audio recordings of phone calls, data from the company's own surveillance on employees and other intercepted communications. "All of these resources are now inaccessible or destroyed and restoring them will possibly require tens of millions of dollars. The damage is strategic," the channel purporting to be the Silent Crow group wrote on Telegram. There was no way to independently verify its claims. The same channel also shared screenshots that appeared to show Aeroflot's internal IT systems, and insinuated that Silent Crow could begin sharing the data it had seized in the coming days. "The personal data of all Russians who have ever flown with Aeroflot have now also gone on a trip -- albeit without luggage and to the same destination," it said. The Belarus Cyber-Partisans told The Associated Press that they had hoped to "deliver a crushing blow." Russia's Prosecutor's Office said it had opened a criminal investigation. Meanwhile, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov called reports of the cyberattack "quite alarming," adding that "the hacker threat is a threat that remains for all large companies providing services to the general public."
Silent Crow claimed it had accessed Aeroflot's corporate network for a year, copying customer and internal data, including audio recordings of phone calls, data from the company's own surveillance on employees and other intercepted communications. "All of these resources are now inaccessible or destroyed and restoring them will possibly require tens of millions of dollars. The damage is strategic," the channel purporting to be the Silent Crow group wrote on Telegram. There was no way to independently verify its claims. The same channel also shared screenshots that appeared to show Aeroflot's internal IT systems, and insinuated that Silent Crow could begin sharing the data it had seized in the coming days. "The personal data of all Russians who have ever flown with Aeroflot have now also gone on a trip -- albeit without luggage and to the same destination," it said. The Belarus Cyber-Partisans told The Associated Press that they had hoped to "deliver a crushing blow." Russia's Prosecutor's Office said it had opened a criminal investigation. Meanwhile, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov called reports of the cyberattack "quite alarming," adding that "the hacker threat is a threat that remains for all large companies providing services to the general public."
Nicely done (Score:5, Insightful)
And about fucking time that Russia started to feel some additional pain for its unconscionable actions
Re:Nicely done (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nicely done (Score:5, Funny)
If they're grounding Aeroflot flights, they might actually be saving lives. /j
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Perhaps, but I doubt the hacker groups are making careful analysis of knock-on and secondary effects to make sure people aren't injured. Maybe it was just an accident that they didn't muck with some system that say, causes a critical safety check to be overlooked and cause a plane to fall out of the sky.
As repugnant as the current Russian regime is, and even if some or many civilians support it, I would draw the line at attacking/disrupting civilian infrastructure. Go to town on the military/military-adja
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That is what not-petya (2017) was.
A version of what could happen with auto-updating cars was shown in "Leave the world behind".
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Cry me a fucking river. Russia could have easily avoided this particular attack by, you know, not fucking invading another country.
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If you've ever been to a Russian airport, you might not be able to spot the difference between "disruption" and "normal service". Having vast swathes of people all standing about waiting for something or other is Normal Operations for Russian airports.
Carefully organised lines and areas isn't really their thing. I don't know if you need to, er, "pay for the express service" or what, but normal people look like they spend hours or days at the airport at a time. One wonders if it's not quicker to walk whereve
Interesting (Score:4, Interesting)
Unlike drones and bombs which deliberately target hospitals, schools, bus stations, train stations, ambulances and other services to the general public, right?
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Informative)
https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/... [hrw.org]
https://operationalsupport.un.... [un.org]
https://www.amnesty.org/en/pet... [amnesty.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press... [ohchr.org]
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Why aren't they killing more civilians if they are targeting them? All you have to do is look at what's happening in Gaza to realize what happens when a modern military makes that its objective.
The idiots are the people who believe Ukrainian propaganda that Russia is wasting expensive weapons attacking civilians when they could be using them to damage the Ukrainians military capacity. Do you really believe they are stupid enough to think Ukrainian civilians are going to successfully force the Ukrainian gove
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Sorry, I'll pass.
both sides are nothing like each other (Score:3, Informative)
You seem to think parroting Russian propaganda will convince thinking people that Russia aren't war criminals.
Russia isn't killing as many people because Ukraine is intercepting the vast majority of the missiles and drones fired into their cities. Ukrainians also have subways and similar places to shelter in.
It's far easier for Israel to kill civilians when they have no defenses and no protection, no armed forces etc.
How about the Bacha massacre? Have Israeli troops been on a raping and torturing rampage
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Why aren't they killing more civilians if they are targeting them?
Why are they killing civilians if they aren't targeting them?
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Meanwhile, back at Sheremetyevo International (Score:2, Funny)
Meanwhile, back at Sheremetyevo International Airport, travelers were treated to advertisements for the food court where Afghanistan foods were being touted next to poo emojis, and the vodka was being watered down in the bar to try and pay for the mounting losses in Ukraine. In other news, sources, who are anonymous because they were not authorized to speak to the press, say that Vladimir Putin was Rickrolled repeatedly all night.
Maybe don't invade your neighbor (Score:1)
...just saying.
Supposedly still running XP (Score:2)
CYBER STRIKE AGAINST RUSSIAN AEROFLOAT! [cpartisans.org]
On the hackers page they claim the systems were running XP and Server 2003 and the CEO had a password from 2022.
Related but over the weekend I watched this Youtube doc on "Putin's Bears" the groups of Russian state backed hacking operations which had some very interesting details on the Germany hack and the DNC hack and the methods employed, very well done and evenhanded.
The Hunt for the World's Most Dangerous Hackers [youtube.com]
Re: Supposedly still running XP (Score:2)
Was it "PutoIsACulo"?
Potrachaites you uznayte! (Score:2)
What's that sound? (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, it was the thud from another Russian CEO accidentally falling out of a window!
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Nice, but several western airlines... (Score:3)
Invasions have consequences (Score:2)
Honestly, for a country at war with a neighbor, the impact on civilians has been remarkably small for Russia.
Re:Invasions have consequences (Score:4, Interesting)
You misunderstood the message.
What GP meant is that Russians don't feel many consequences despite their country waging a genocidal war against their neighbour. Most of them were so far merely somewhat inconvinienced by it.