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
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?
Lol dude welcome to software these days.
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.
Everyone needs an off-site, offline backup. If not, you’re a moron.
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.
So, having watched russia be absolute morons for like 600 days now, they didn’t have a back up, did they?
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
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.
- nobody can admit mistakes unless they accept resignation or defenestration (or both and not necessarily in that order)
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.
You assume the system were written this century and could even have those features.
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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.
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err, i think it dosen’t matter, biolionary already rule the country, so they weren’t going be held accountable to begin with
Optimistically, whatever tax is not getting paid, it converts to money not being spent to continue the war. Realistically I would expect the government to cut every other expense but the war, so this is not going to influence the war short-term :(
The thread starter is probably right about civilians’ morale, cause they are going to be sucked dry of any money even faster with this kind of fuck-up from government
Yeah it’s the rich that benefit from this, same if it happened to the US. The rich take longer to audit than the poor
To be fair I think Ukraine benefits from this too
Fuck russia
Can’t wait to never hear another one of their fuckimg stupid Chinese-riddle-threats, fucking hate that shit. Always a ridiculous threat they have zero abillity or intention to see thru
Wanna release some info on which GOP politicians are on Russian bankrolls now?
That would be a sweet sweet Christmas present.
Surely they sniffed and stole a bunch before wiping? Might not have been viable, but I can hope!
That would be fake new and propaganda. To say one is being played by the enemy because you disagree with them is problematic at best. We should try to work out our differences instead of arresting our rivals.
Well said, Comrad
I’m sure they will just restore it from the backup tapes. They weren’t so incompetent as to not keep offline backups right?
Have you not seen Chernobyl aha?
So how does one hire their services? Asking for a country.
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).
Just been in tax department, everything works normaly 🤷♂️
Let’s not call this a win. Cyber warfare is just going to harm ordinary civilians and shouldn’t be encouraged even if its a good cause.
