Russia’s state statistics agency Rosstat said Sunday that its websites had been hit by a coordinated cyberattack, while hackers claimed to have stolen 23 terabytes of data, including information on Russian losses in the war in Ukraine.
Messages from the Belarusian Cyber Partisans and Silent Crow hacking groups appeared on the agency’s main website and regional portals, Rosstat told the RBC news website. Among them was a message in Belarusian reading: “No one will escape accountability.”
Both groups are designated as extremist and banned in Russia.
Rosstat said the attacks took place between Oct. 29 and Nov. 1 and were carefully planned, targeting several areas simultaneously and involving specialists with different expertise operating from a wide range of locations.
The agency denied that any databases or legally protected information had been leaked, saying its monitoring systems had detected suspicious activity in time for staff to respond quickly.
Its 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 could not be independently verified.
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.
The same hacking groups claimed responsibility for a July 2025 attack on Aeroflot’s IT systems that caused widespread disruption. Russian prosecutors confirmed that a cyberattack had taken place 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 state real estate registry Rosreestr. The agency denied a leak, although journalists were able to verify some of the information the hackers published.
This article was translated with the help of artificial intelligence and was reviewed by a Moscow Times editor before publication. Learn more about our newsroom's AI policy here.
Read this article in Russian at The Moscow Times' Russian service.
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