Ukrainian hacktivists took Russian bank connectivity provider Infotel JSC offline

Infotel JSC, a Moscow-based telecommunications provider, was knocked offline on June 8, 2023 by a pro-Ukraine hacktivist group calling itself Cyber.Anarchy.Squad. Network monitoring placed the outage at about 10:55 UTC, and the company remained unreachable for well over a day.

Infotel operates the automated electronic interaction system that connects the Central Bank of Russia to commercial banks and other financial institutions. The company had roughly 400 clients, about a quarter of them Russian banks. With its routers down, banks, online stores, electronic banking platforms and credit organizations were unable to complete transactions.

Infotel acknowledged the attack, saying a large-scale intrusion had damaged some of its network equipment and that restoration work was under way. BleepingComputer reported the company was offline for roughly 34 hours, while Infosecurity Magazine reported that routing was restored after about two and a half days with customer outages continuing beyond that.

The attackers posted screenshots on Telegram as proof, including what appeared to be an Infotel network diagram and access to a company email account, and claimed the firm's infrastructure had been destroyed. A spokesperson for the Ukrainian Cyber Alliance said servers, backups and core routers were affected. The group also defaced a number of Russian websites with messages supporting Ukraine's counteroffensive, which had begun that week. The claim of total destruction was not independently verified.