{"id":299158,"date":"2025-07-28T18:39:13","date_gmt":"2025-07-28T18:39:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/299158\/"},"modified":"2025-07-28T18:39:13","modified_gmt":"2025-07-28T18:39:13","slug":"cyberattack-on-russian-airline-aeroflot-causes-the-cancellation-of-more-than-100-flights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/299158\/","title":{"rendered":"Cyberattack on Russian airline Aeroflot causes the cancellation of more than 100 flights"},"content":{"rendered":"

A cyberattack on Russian state-owned flagship carrier Aeroflot caused a mass outage to the company\u2019s computer systems on Monday, Russia\u2019s prosecutor\u2019s office said, forcing the airline to cancel more than 100 flights and delay others.<\/p>\n

Ukrainian hacker group Silent Crow and Belarusian hacker activist group the Belarus Cyber-Partisans<\/a>, which opposes the rule of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko<\/a>, claimed responsibility for the cyberattack.<\/p>\n

It is one of the most disruptive cyberattacks to hit Russia since the start of the country\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Previous attacks have targeted Russian government websites and other major Russian companies \u2014 noteably the state-owned Russian Railways \u2014 but normal services have resumed within hours.<\/p>\n

Images shared on social media showed hundreds of delayed passengers crowding Moscow\u2019s Sheremetyevo airport, where Aeroflot is based. The outage also disrupted flights operated by Aeroflot\u2019s subsidiaries, Rossiya and Pobeda.<\/p>\n

While most of the flights affected were domestic, the disruption also led to cancellations for some international flights to Belarus<\/a>, Armenia and Uzbekistan.<\/p>\n

In a statement released early Monday, Aeroflot warned passengers that the company\u2019s information technology system was experiencing unspecified difficulties and that disruption could follow.<\/p>\n

Russia\u2019s Prosecutor\u2019s Office later confirmed that a cyberattack had caused the outage and that it had opened a criminal investigation.<\/p>\n

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov called reports of the cyberattack \u201cquite alarming,\u201d adding that \u201cthe hacker threat is a threat that remains for all large companies providing services to the general public.\u201d<\/p>\n

Silent Crow claimed it had accessed Aeroflot\u2019s corporate network for a year, copying customer and internal data, including audio recordings of phone calls, data from the company\u2019s own surveillance on employees and other intercepted communications.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of these resources are now inaccessible or destroyed and restoring them will possibly require tens of millions of dollars. The damage is strategic,\u201d the channel purporting to be the Silent Crow group wrote on Telegram. There was no way to independently verify its claims.<\/p>\n

The same channel also shared screenshots that appeared to show Aeroflot\u2019s internal IT systems, and insinuated that Silent Crow could begin sharing the data it had seized in the coming days.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe personal data of all Russians who have ever flown with Aeroflot have now also gone on a trip \u2014 albeit without luggage and to the same destination,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n

The Belarus Cyber-Partisans told The Associated Press that they had hoped to \u201cdeliver a crushing blow.\u201d The group has previously claimed responsibility for a number of cyberattacks, and said in April 2024 that they had been able to infiltrate the network of Belarus\u2019 main KGB security agency. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a very large-scale attack and one of the most painful in terms of consequences,\u201d group coordinator Yuliana Shametavets said. She said that the group had been preparing the attack for several months, and were able to penetrate the Aeroflot network by exploiting various vulnerabilities.<\/p>\n

Belarus is a close ally of Russia. Lukashenko, who has ruled Belarus with an iron hand for more than 30 years and has relied on Russian subsidies and support, allowed Russia to use his country\u2019s territory to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, and to deploy some of Moscow\u2019s tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.<\/p>\n

Russia\u2019s airports have repeatedly faced mass delays<\/a> over the summer as a result of Ukrainian drone attacks, with flights grounded amid safety concerns.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A cyberattack on Russian state-owned flagship carrier Aeroflot caused a mass outage to the company\u2019s computer systems on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":299159,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7655],"tags":[110744,103753,1111,51,13509,7667,4179,36030,2301,45311,332,7659,53,263,110745],"class_list":{"0":"post-299158","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-russia","8":"tag-alexander-lukashenko","9":"tag-aviation-safety","10":"tag-belarus","11":"tag-business","12":"tag-cybercrime","13":"tag-dmitry-peskov","14":"tag-general-news","15":"tag-information-security","16":"tag-moscow","17":"tag-power-outages","18":"tag-russia","19":"tag-russia-government","20":"tag-technology","21":"tag-world-news","22":"tag-yuliana-shametavets"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114932322913154995","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299158\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/299159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}