On July 28, a major disruption occurred in the operations of Russia’s largest airline, Aeroflot, leading to the cancellation of many flights. According to Telegram channels in Russia, at least 49 flights departing from Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport were canceled, reports Baltimore Chronicle, citing the airline and Russian sources. Among the canceled destinations were Yekaterinburg, Chelyabinsk, Stavropol, Mineralnye Vody, several flights to St. Petersburg, as well as to Minsk, Yerevan, and other Russian cities. Long queues of passengers formed at the airport terminals.
The official version provided by the airline is that a technical failure occurred in its information systems. However, later it was revealed that the hacker group Silent Crow, together with the Belarusian “Cyberpartisans BY,” claimed responsibility for the attack. According to their statements, the operation lasted nearly a year, during which they were able to infiltrate Aeroflot’s corporate network. The hackers claim to have destroyed the airline’s IT infrastructure and gained access to databases containing flight history records, personnel control systems, and internal phone conversations. It was also reported that about 7,000 physical and virtual servers were destroyed. Official confirmation of the cyberattack has not been provided, but speculation regarding the hackers’ involvement in the incident is circulating within Russian media.
Earlier we wrote that ukrainian hackers wipe out thousands of devices in Orion Telecom Breach.