A hacking group affiliated with the Ukrainian government, known as BO Team, has asserted responsibility for the erasure of data from more than 280 servers connected to Planeta, a Russian meteorological and satellite service provider. Security experts’ preliminary analysis indicates that the compromised information encompassed weather forecasts, climate data, predictions for natural disasters, volcanic monitoring, and the positioning of numerous satellites. Recovery from backups is deemed challenging.
Russia has yet to respond to the incident, currently engrossed in investigating a separate satellite data breach that encompasses intelligence gathering for military, civil aviation, agriculture, maritime activities, and space-related intrusions.
The magnitude of the breach is substantial, with two petabytes, equivalent to over 2000 terabytes, of data eradicated from servers in the far-eastern division of Planeta. Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense has officially acknowledged BO Team as part of its cadre collaborating with government-funded intelligence agencies.
Roscosmos, the parent company of the Russian Centre for Space Hydrometeorology, operating under the name Planeta, issued a statement via Telegram refuting the hackers’ claims, asserting the integrity of their data stored within server farms.
Contradicting this official stance, an anonymous ministerial source revealed that the hack indeed transpired, causing substantial disruptions to the operations of supercomputers, HVAC devices, and power systems. The source disclosed that the wiped data pertained to the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, containing critical information about troop deployments in Ukraine and their planned actions. This information is especially crucial as the conflict with Ukraine, under President Zelensky, approaches its two-year mark after February 23rd, 2024.
It remains unclear whether the cyber-criminals initially copied the data onto their own servers before executing the wipe on the satellite data servers of the Russian Federation.
