Published on: October 15, 2024
The Ukrainian hacker group known as the BO Team launched a devastating assault on Russian infrastructure last Monday, temporarily crippling its courts and state-ran media companies. Some of the outages have lasted for more than one week and there are no official reports to indicate that the incident has been resolved.
According to the pro-Kremlin media source Gazeta.ru, the hackers brought down more than 80 state media stations, including Rossiya-1, Rossiya-24, and Karusel. All of these stations could only play traditional broadcast signals while they were impacted.
The hackers also brought down large parts of Russia’s courts by deleting court documents and decisions. It’s currently unclear how much damage this caused. Moscow courts are continuing to function under a separate domain.
The attack also affected online broadcasts, but these resumed the day after the attack.
The Russian court’s official Telegram account posted that several television stations were experiencing technical difficulties. At the same time, they informed citizens not to submit sensitive documents online.
After investigating the hack, Russian authorities reported that Russian infrastructure was not seriously damaged. The VGTRK said that they could resume operations, but since this required a brand-new domain, it’s likely that the incident has not been fully resolved.
The BO Team posted that their attacks were part of the celebration of Vladimir Putin’s birthday (the current leader of Russia).
This hack is just the latest one in a series of aggressive cyber attacks brought on by the ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia. Researchers with the Center for European Policy Analysis noted that Russian cyberattacks on Ukraine have grown more frequent, but Ukraine’s cybersecurity defenses have improved so much that the numerous attacks aren’t as effective.
By contrast, Ukraine has also begun ramping up its frequency of attacks on Russia, but these attacks have grown more efficacious. Immediately before the attack on Russia’s state media and courts, Ukrainian hackers also delivered a crippling blow to Russia’s financial industry.