For second day, Russia's Aeroflot cancels flights after reported cyberattack

Russia's largest airline, Aeroflot, continued canceling flights for a second consecutive day after a pro-Ukrainian hacker group claimed responsibility for a devastating cyberattack on its IT infrastructure, Russian pro-government news agency Interfax reported on July 29.

The airline canceled 22 flights departing from Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport and 31 incoming flights operated both independently and jointly with its subsidiary Rossiya Airlines, Interfax said.

The hacker group Silent Crow claimed responsibility for the attack in cooperation with the Belarusian opposition group Cyber Partisans BY. In a July 28 Telegram post, the group said it spent a year infiltrating Aeroflot's corporate network before launching the operation.

The hacker group claimed to have completely destroyed the company's IT infrastructure, affecting 7,000 physical and virtual servers, and accessed 20 terabytes of data.

They alleged that the airline had glaring security lapses, including CEO Sergey Alexandrovsky's unchanged password since 2022 and widespread use of outdated Windows XP systems.

While Aeroflot, which remains under heavy Western sanctions, reported that 93% of scheduled flights resumed on July 29 — 216 out of 233 — disruptions continued across its Moscow hub.

A day earlier, nearly 50 flights in and out of Sheremetyevo were canceled, with routes to Astrakhan, Grozny, Kaliningrad, Minsk, and Yerevan affected.

Kyiv has not commented on the hack. Russia and Ukraine have both deployed cyberattacks extensively during the war, often targeting each other's government institutions and critical infrastructure.

Since 2022, Aeroflot has been banned from U.S. and EU airspace and cut off from critical aviation supplies. As sanctions limit access to spare parts, maintenance, and insurance, the company has faced mounting operational challenges.

The attack follows increasing disruptions in Russian civil aviation. According to Russia's Federal Aviation Agency, flight restrictions due to Ukrainian drone threats have affected 43 airports at least 489 times since January.

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The Kyiv IndependentTim Zadorozhnyy