"The damage is strategic". Hackers from Belarus claim to have destroyed Aeroflot's IT system
Photo: FlyingHigh Aviation

Hackers from Belarus have announced the complete destruction of the internal IT structure of the Russian company Aeroflot as a result of a "long and large-scale operation". The message published in the Silent Crow Telegram channel.

The hackers claim that together with the Cyber Partisans of Belarus group, they were inside the corporate network for a year, "methodically developing access, going deeper into the very core of the infrastructure – Tier0."

According to the statement, they succeeded:

→ receive and upload the full array of flight history databases;
→ compromise all critical corporate systems, including CREW, Sabre, SharePoint, Exchange, CASUD, Sirax, CRM, ERP, 1C, DLP, and others;
→ to gain control over employees' personal computers, including top management;
→ copy data from listening servers, including audio recordings of phone calls and intercepted communications;
→ extract data from personnel surveillance and control systems.

They also claim that about 7,000 servers, both physical and virtual, were destroyed as a result of the actions.

The hackers estimated the amount of information obtained to be 12TB of databases, 8TB of Windows Share files, and 2TB of corporate mail.

"All of these resources are now inaccessible or destroyed, and restoration will require possibly tens of millions of dollars. The losses are strategic," Silent Crow noted.

The hackers called their operation a "message" to Russian security forces and organizations "unable to protect key infrastructure."

"We will start publishing some of the data soon. We did not just destroy the infrastructure, we left a trace. Glory to Ukraine! Long live Belarus!" the hackers wrote.

Prior to that, Silent Crow hacked into Rostelecom and Rosreestr and posted Russians' data online.

Aeroflot has not yet commented on these statements.

On the morning of July 28, the airline reported that it had canceled more than 40 flights from Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport "due to a failure of information systems." Aeroflot did not give a reason for the failure.

Passengers are being returned their already checked-in luggage and promised a refund for their tickets. The state-owned company's stock on the Moscow Exchange fell by almost 4%.

  • "Aeroflot is Russia's largest aviation group, which includes Aeroflot, Rossiya, and Pobeda airlines. According to Kommersant newspaper, in 2024, the group's airlines carried more than 55 million passengers, and its share of the Russian market was 42.3%.
  • on July 6, a number of Russian airports (including those in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod, etc.) stopped or limited work due to "periodic interference in their work from the outside".