Aeroflots Can't Recover From Cyber Attacks, Many Flights Canceled

Aeroflot canceled 59 round-trip flights from Moscow (photo: x @front_ukrainian)

JAKARTA - Russia's national airline, Aeroflot, again canceled dozens of flights on Tuesday, July 29, following a massive cyberattack that occurred the day before. However, the airline claims that their flight schedule has now been "stabilized" and most operations are back to normal.

This attack is claimed to have been carried out by two pro-Ukraine hacker groups, namely Belarusian Cyber Partisans and a new group called Silent Crow. In their statement, hackers said they had carried out a one-year operation to infiltrate the Aeroflot network. They claimed to have paralyzed 7,000 servers, stolen personal data on passengers and employees, and took over staff personal computers, including senior management.

The impact of this attack was felt on Monday, July 28, where Aeroflot canceled 59 round-trip flights from Moscow from a total of 260 scheduled flights. According to a report by the Interfax news agency, on Tuesday Aeroflot again canceled 22 flights from Moscow and 31 flights to the Russian capital.

However, in its official statement, Aeroflot said that almost all schedules had returned to normal.

"As of today, 93% of flights to and from Moscow are planned to operate as scheduled (216 out of 233 round-trip flights)," wrote Aeroflot.

The airline also explained that almost all canceled flights on Tuesday occurred before 10 am Moscow time (07.00 GMT). After that, operations are claimed to run normally.

Until 10:00, the company made a selective cancellation. After that, the Aeroflot flight program stabilized again," the statement added.

However, this attack had caused massive delays throughout Russia, the country with the widest territory in the world. Many passengers voiced anger and frustration due to the disturbance, mainly due to a lack of clarity of information amid the chaos.

The claim of responsibility from Belarusian Cyber Partisans is quite interesting, considering that this group has long been known as an opposition to Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko near Russian President Vladimir Putin. While the Silent Crow group is not widely known, its courage in attacking Aeroflot shows the growing threat from shadow hacker groups.

This incident immediately caught the attention of Russian legislators. Several lawmakers called this cyberattack a "hard charm" and urged investigations not only against the perpetrators of the attack, but also against anyone who allowed the attack to occur.

"This is an attack on the country's important infrastructure. Investigations must be thorough and target not only hackers, but also internal parties who are negligent," one Russian lawmaker told local media.

Although Aeroflot tried to reduce panic by calling the service stable, the incident left major question marks regarding cyber resilience in Russia's transportation sector, as well as potential escalation of digital conflict between Russia and pro-Ukraine groups.