Hacker group claims responsibility of attacking Russian airline’s digital infrastructure

(MENAFN) Over 40 flights operated by Russia’s main airline were canceled on Monday due to what the company described as a technical malfunction affecting its internal systems, as reported by various sources.

The airline’s headquarters, located at Moscow's Sheremetyevo International Airport, released a statement acknowledging the disruption but did not clarify the origin of the system failure or provide an estimate for resolution. “Passengers of cancelled flights have the following options: refund or reissue for flights in the next 10 days,” the company stated, also noting that IT experts were working to fix the issue.

While the majority of affected flights were within Russia, services to destinations in Armenia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan were also impacted.

According to authorities, the disruption stemmed from a cyber intrusion. The prosecutor general’s office confirmed that the incident is being treated as a criminal case, attributing the outage to a “hacker attack.”

A hacker collective using the name Silent Crow claimed responsibility via a post on Telegram. They said they had “completely destroyed” the airline’s digital infrastructure after executing what they described as a prolonged and thorough operation. “For a year, we were inside their corporate network, methodically developing access, going deep into the very core of the infrastructure,” they declared.

The group alleged that it wiped out roughly 7,000 servers and accessed around 22 terabytes of data. It also warned that it would soon release “personal data of all Russians who have ever flown with Aeroflot.”

The claims made by the hackers have not been independently confirmed, and the airline has not issued a response to the allegations.

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