​The Ukrainian government's military intelligence service says it hacked the Russian Federal Taxation Service (FNS), wiping the agency's database and backup copies.

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

  • Dave@lemmy.nz
    22·
    11 months ago

    How would a country’s tax department not have a backup system that can handle this? Surely they would know they are a prime target, and so have air-gapped backups in addition to an automated backup process?

      • Dave@lemmy.nz
        8·
        11 months ago

        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?

        • squirmy_wormy@lemmy.world
          8·
          11 months ago

          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.

            • squirmy_wormy@lemmy.world
              121·
              11 months ago

              Oh of course, we all know the best practices. And we all follow them to the best of our abilities. That’s why hacks are so uncommon.

    • Vilian@lemmy.ca
      7·
      11 months ago

      from someone following the war, if the tax department is as competent as the military, yeah, not surprising

      also there was a massive outflux of capable people when the war started, IT was one of the biggest

    • LetterboxPancake@sh.itjust.worksDeutsch
      6·
      11 months ago

      Valid question. But on the other hand, Russia doesn’t seem like they are well organized in anything they do. And normally they’re the ones hacking the rest of the world, they probably didn’t expect to be on the receiving end.

      • cheese_greater@lemmy.world
        3·
        11 months ago
        • nobody can admit mistakes unless they accept resignation or defenestration (or both and not necessarily in that order)
    • BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social
      61·
      11 months ago

      The chaos itself is worth a lot, but beyond that, the thing you have to understand in regimes like Russia is the massive incentive to never admit any kind of failure, which results in an increasing build-up of little lies as you move up the chain of command so that the dictator’s close circle can tell him that everything is wonderful, when on the ground it’s a disaster of people terrified to admit any kind of fault.