Ukrainian hackers almost managed to destroy a Russian Internet provider

A regional Russian Internet provider called Nodex was almost completely destroyed by an attack by a Ukrainian hacker group. Nodex confirmed the attack in a statement on the Russian social network VK, saying that its network had been “destroyed” and that it was working to restore the infrastructure from backups.

A hacker group called the Ukrainian Cyber ​​Alliance claimed responsibility for the attack, saying that St. Petersburg-based Nodex had been “completely ransacked and wiped out, and they were left with empty equipment with no backup.” Cyberattacks have long been the domain of countries like Russia and North Korea, which use them to infiltrate domestic infrastructure such as utility grids and, in North Korea’s case, even steal cryptocurrency to finance nuclear weapons development.

TechCrunch previously reported on the Ukraine attack and wrote that Nodex had been offline since Tuesday.

The attack comes as Russia continues to test its ability to cut off its citizens from the global internet in favor of its limited, sovereign network. Last year, Roskomnadzor, Russia’s federal agency that regulates the Internet limited global internet access for a day in several parts of the country, especially Muslim-majority areas, even preventing VPNs from reaching servers outside the country.

The Kremlin understandably wants to control the flow of information citizens have access to during the ongoing war with Ukraine. Information about the war is heavily censored and there are severe penalties for referring to it as anything other than a “special operation”.

YouTube remained available in Russia, but critics said regular significant outages and slowdowns were the result Intentional blockage prevent government viewing of certain content. Russia, of course, hopes that by blocking websites outside of its control, citizens will not be exposed to content that contradicts the Kremlin’s narrative and will only consider what it deems acceptable. News operations such as Radio Free Europe that spread Western ideas and online influence campaigns through social media could be neutralized if the Russians simply cut off their coverage.

That said, if Russia moves forward with separating ISPs from the rest of the world, breaking the world into even more segregated silos, attacks on Internet networks by Ukrainian groups may not be effective for long.