The Ukrainian government’s military intelligence service says it hacked the Russian Federal Taxation Service, wiping the agency’s database and backup copies.
Following this operation, carried out by cyber units within Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence, military intelligence officers breached Russia’s federal taxation service central servers and 2,300 regional servers across Russia and occupied Ukrainian territories.
As Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence says, the repercussions of the cyberattack have been severe, causing a breakdown in communication between Moscow’s central office and the 2,300 territorial departments that also got hacked in the attack.
It has led to a virtual collapse of one of Russia’s vital governmental agencies with a significant loss of tax-related data, according to GUR, as well as tax data-related internet traffic across Russia falling into the hands of Ukraine’s military hackers, as The Record first reported.
“This means a complete destruction of the infrastructure of one of the main state bodies of terrorist Russia and numerous related tax data for a long period,” GUR said.
GUR said it hacked Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency last month, gaining access to classified data and leaking it online.
The impact of these cyberattacks underscores Ukraine’s increased cyber warfare efforts against Russia, leveraging its military intelligence cyber units to disrupt critical Russian infrastructure.
Summary by smmry.com
I’m wondering how Ukraine know they got all the backups. Maybe they only got one or two levels of backup?
The attack also reportedly resulted in the complete deletion of configuration files crucial for the functionality of Russia’s extensive taxation system, wiping out both the main database and its backup copies
Maybe they think they’ve deleted all copies of a decryption key?
Software is amazingly fragile if you know what to look for and if you assume someone’s running the same setup as 90% of everyone else.
