Russia’s Statistics Agency Hit by Cyberattack as Hackers Claim Massive Data Theft - The Moscow Times
Russia’s state statistics agency Rosstat said its websites were hit by a coordinated cyberattack between Oct. 29 and Nov. 1, with hackers claiming to have stolen 23 terabytes of data.
Messages from the Belarusian Cyber Partisans and Silent Crow appeared on Rosstat’s main website and regional portals, including a statement in Belarusian reading: “No one will escape accountability.” Both groups are designated as extremist and banned in Russia.
Rosstat described the attacks as carefully planned, involving specialists with different expertise operating from a wide range of locations. The agency’s main website was inaccessible at the time of publication.
The hackers claimed the stolen files included data on Russian wartime losses, demographic and economic statistics, and documents marked “for official use only.” Their claims have not been independently verified.
Rosstat denied that any databases or legally protected information had been leaked, stating its monitoring systems detected suspicious activity in time for staff to respond quickly.
The same groups claimed responsibility for a July 2025 attack on Aeroflot’s IT systems, which caused widespread disruption. Russian prosecutors confirmed that cyberattack and opened a criminal investigation into unauthorized access to computer systems.
In January 2025, Silent Crow claimed to have stolen a database containing 2 billion records on property owners from Rosreestr. The agency denied a leak, though journalists verified some of the information the hackers published.
Rosstat’s official methodology includes a category for deaths resulting from military operations, but the agency stopped publishing its annual cause-of-death statistics in 2024. Other data that could help assess the war’s impact have also disappeared from public access.
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