For the second month in a row, telecommunication service providers in Russia have been unable to recover from powerful cyberattacks by the Defence Intelligence of Ukraine (DIU). The Online.UA source in the DIU reported about it.
Points of attention
- DIU carried out a powerful cyber attack on Russian providers and companies that could not work for two days.
- The attacks were aimed at causing financial losses, paralysing work, and creating psychological pressure on Russia's territory.
- The cyber attack affected the networks of operators and subscribers, leading to a significant interruption in service provision.
- DIU and Ukrainian cyber activists successfully conducted a series of cyber attacks on Russian companies, destroying important data and equipment.
DIU called into question the work of Russian providers
A large-scale cyber attack carried out by the State Security Service specialists at the end of May left at least 250,000 subscribers without communication in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine. The vast majority of them are in the occupied Crimea. In Russia, this DDoS attack is called the most powerful of those that took place.
According to the general director of one of the Russian telecommunications operators, Ivan Zima, it took at least 16 hours for the providers to restore the connection, at least minimally.
In fact, a significant number of subscribers remained without Internet for more than two days. The attack affected both the networks of subscribers and the networks of operators that used the affected infrastructure.
As the providers' representatives note, they experienced difficulties communicating with subscribers during the restoration of the connection. Due to traditional cases of Russian fraud, subscribers refused to provide operators with their current contact information.
20% of subscribers refused to moderniSe their network equipment in case of future cyber attacks.
At the same time, ISPs brought in hundreds of additional technicians to handle the many complaints from disgruntled customers.
Telecom operator "Miranda-media" suffered the most, its subscribers did not have access to communication and could not pay for services due to damage to the billing system.
Users of "Miranda-media" ("Mirtelecom" in the occupied territories) could not use access to the network in Crimea, in the temporarily occupied territories of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions. The Russian provider "Farline" network in Crimea was also significantly damaged.
Similar attacks continued in June. Miranda Media, propaganda media servers, servers of local occupation authorities, contact centers, registration and traffic control systems on the Kerch Bridge, airport resources and network infrastructure, and payment systems were under attack. This led to the termination of cash registers in Crimea, the delay of many flights, and the occurrence of significant traffic jams on the Crimean bridge.
DIU, Ukrainian cyber activists conducted successful attacks on Russian companies
During the week, cyber-activists, together with DIU, conducted a series of successful cyber-attacks on Russian companies that support military aggression against Ukraine.
During the past week, the following operations were carried out:
Over 100 terabytes of data from OrbitSoft, a software developer that performed contracts for the Russian occupation army, was destroyed.
Data on eight servers of Orient Systems, which develops and supplies navigation equipment, was completely erased. This company cooperated with Russian manufacturers of military equipment, including unmanned aerial vehicles.
All data on 19 servers of Internet providers in Nizhny Novgorod — "Linktelecom NN" and "Access Telecom" was destroyed. All providers' subscribers were sent letters reminding them of the inevitability of responsibility for the war against Ukraine.
The purpose of these cyberattacks was not only to destroy important data and equipment, but also to paralyse the work of companies, cause them financial losses, and create psychological pressure on the territory of Russia.
In particular, a massive DDoS attack was carried out on the propaganda website "Kerch FM" and the mobile operator "Miranda-media" servers.
This operator provides trunk communication channels for the call centre of the occupation administration of Sevastopol, so the number of the single contact centre stopped working.
