Hacker group Silent Crow announced the complete destruction of Aeroflot's internal IT infrastructure as a result of a "long and large-scale operation." The Russian airline is canceling flights. Experts estimate the losses from the cyberattack at up to $50 million.
Points of attention
- Aeroflot fell victim to a cyberattack by the Silent Crow hacker group, resulting in the complete destruction of the airline's internal IT infrastructure and estimated losses of up to $50 million.
- The hackers had gained access to Aeroflot's corporate network for a year, compromising critical systems, gaining control over private information, and causing disruption to flight operations.
- The cyberattack by Silent Crow was considered a strategic message to Russian security forces, highlighting vulnerabilities in key infrastructure protection.
Aeroflot will need six months to recover from cyberattack
The hackers claim that, together with the group "Cyber guerrillas BY" for a year, they "were inside the corporate network" of the Russian airline and were able to destroy about 7,000 physical and virtual servers.
According to them, they obtained flight history databases, compromised all critical corporate systems, gained control over the personal computers of employees, including management, and copied data from server listening and from personnel surveillance and control systems.
It is noted that the amount of information obtained by the hackers was estimated at 12 TB of databases, 8 TB of files from Windows Share, and 2 TB of corporate email.
All of these resources are now inaccessible or destroyed, and restoration will require perhaps tens of millions of dollars. The losses are strategic.
The hackers called their operation a "message" to Russian security forces and organizations "unable to protect key infrastructure."
Before that, Silent Crow hacked Rostelecom and Rosregister and posted Russians' data online.
It is noted that at the time of publication, the carrier had already canceled 42 flights to and from Sheremetyevo. Crowds of passengers gathered at the airport, to whom Aeroflot promised to refund the money for tickets "in the next 10 days."
According to experts, Aeroflot lost between $10 million and $50 million as a result of the hacker attack. Restoring the databases could take up to six months.
