The Russian airline Aeroflot today canceled dozens of flights in connection with a “problem in the information systems”. A hacker group that calls itself Silent Crow claims that he has hacked the Aeroflot systems. Aeroflot has not yet confirmed that.
Silent Crow writes according to The Kyiv Independent on Telegram having broken into the company network of Aeroflot for a year and had access to ‘the core of the infrastructure’. The Hackers group also says it has destroyed the IT infrastructure ‘completely’, including seven thousand servers. Silent Crow is said to have taken the attack in collaboration with the Belarusian activist group Cyberpartisans by, opponent of the regime of the Belarusian President Aleksandr Loekashenko.
The activist movement says it has carried out the hack because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “Glory of Ukraine! Long live Belarus,” writes Silent Crow on Telegram. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri Peskov calls the malfunction at Aeroflot in a first response ‘very alarming’. The Ukrainian government has not yet responded to the hack.
Since the Russian invasion in Ukraine and the subsequent international sanctions, the number of destinations on which Russian airlines can fly have fallen drastically. It has also been much more common since then that air traffic is disturbed. For example, there are regular delays in connection with attacks on Russian airports with drones.
An Airbus A321-211 from Aeroflot stranded in Geneva after the airspace was closed for Russian flights shortly after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Photo Salvatore di Nolfi/EPA