Hackers have allegedly managed to break into the computer system of Russia’s aviation regulator and deleted every single record held by the agency. The cyber attack is believed to have been orchestrated by the hacktivist group Anonymous who declared a cyber war on Russia after President Vladimir Putin ordered an invasion of Ukraine.
In all, around 65 terabytes of data have been permanently deleted – a single terabyte would be the equivalent of around 75 million pages. The lost, and possibly unrecoverable data, includes a trove of documents, as well as aircraft registration documents and email.
The website of Russian aviation regulator Rosaviatsia went down on Monday but the cyber attack is believed to have started on Saturday when documents started to be deleted. Sources claim much of the data was never backed up due to a lack of government funds.
Rosaviatsia has denied suggestions its computer system has been hacked and instead claims the website is undergoing a major restructuring because its head is due to retire after 23-years at the helm go the agency.
The agency did, however, admit that it had been forced to switch to paper record keeping and advised that urgent messages would have to be transmitted via the legacy AFTN channel network.
Anonymous has carried out a number of successful cyber attacks against Russian state entities since launching its campaign against Putin’s regime. One of the most high-profile was an attack on a Russian broadcaster that interrupted normal programming with pictures of the fighting in Ukraine which are normally censored.
Here’s a thought. Putin decides to nationalize 500 aircraft that legally belong to the western countries that leased them out to them. Then “hackers” destroy the electronic records – to include aircraft registration… Which were not backed up… Right.