Ukrainian military intelligence conducted a large-scale DDoS operation against the Russian System of Fast Payments (SBP) and the provider TransTeleCom, which simultaneously disrupted instant transfers, online payments, and some Internet services in the Russian Federation. According to the source, the losses could reach up to $30 million.
Ukrainian military intelligence conducted a large-scale DDoS operation against the Russian System of Fast Payments (SBP) and the provider TransTeleCom, which simultaneously disrupted instant transfers, online payments, and some Internet services in the Russian Federation. According to the source, the losses could reach up to $30 million.
The incident was reported by Ukrainska Pravda, citing a source in the Ministry of Defense’s GUR. According to him, the attack hit the nodal infrastructure of the Russian Federation’s national payment system and the main communications operator, which caused chain failures in a number of regions.
After the wave of DDoS, many users in Russia were unable to make instant P2P transfers and pay for services online. In the urban communities of Yekaterinburg, mass complaints were recorded about the inability to pay for travel contactlessly, and to make cashless payments at gas stations. At the same time, some subscribers of local providers were left without the Internet and interactive TV.
«SBP» is the key internal payment network of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation for instant transfers between banks, QR payments at retail outlets, and «mass payments» in transport and services. It is through it that numerous «donations» to pro-Kremlin «charitable» structures that support the war go. Any degradation of its availability affects the daily calculations and financial logistics of the occupier.
According to the source, the attack was aimed at overloading the application services of SBP and the transport infrastructure of TransTeleCom (TTK), one of the main operators of the Russian Federation. As a result, some banking fronts and network routes worked with significant delays or failed altogether. It was the combination of payment and network failures that caused a domino effect for critical services.
The interlocutor of «UP» speaks of up to $30 million in direct and indirect losses: this is the unearned revenue of retail and transport networks, billing failures, compensation costs of operators, fines and refunds, as well as emergency restoration work.
Under sanctions and limited access to international payment channels, Russia’s SBP has become a mainstay of domestic payments, from household payments to mass microtransactions. Its destabilization exposes the vulnerability of Russia’s financial infrastructure to coordinated cyberattacks and shows that even «closed» national networks have weaknesses at the level of network providers, routing, and front-end banking services.
Previously, dev.ua wrote about how cyber specialists of the Main Intelligence Directorate hacked the occupiers' servers in temporarily occupied Crimea for the second time in recent months. Among the intelligence data obtained were information about the illegal movement of Ukrainian children, lists of military personnel, official correspondence of the so-called «government», and much more.
