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
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    10 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
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        10 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
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          10 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
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              10 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.

    • LetterboxPancake@sh.itjust.works
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      10 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
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        10 months ago
        • nobody can admit mistakes unless they accept resignation or defenestration (or both and not necessarily in that order)
    • Dave@lemmy.nz
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      10 months ago

      I’m actually wondering how many Russian billionaires are celebrating today that the tax department has lost the records of all the tax bills they haven’t paid.

  • cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de
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    10 months ago

    I’m sure they will just restore it from the backup tapes. They weren’t so incompetent as to not keep offline backups right?

  • Szymon@lemmy.ca
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    10 months ago

    Wanna release some info on which GOP politicians are on Russian bankrolls now?

  • 768@sh.itjust.works
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    10 months ago

    This seems like major strike for the Ukraine if true, but I assume the effects of the ensuing chaos might take a bit of time, because taxation data is kinda at the infrastructure planning and maintenance point and infrastructure takes a lot of energy or time to change (ie destroy/demilitarise in this case).