Topic
Rostelecom
Metascan Confirms Limited Data Breach After Two-Minute Telegram Bot Compromise
Data Breaches & Leaks
Russia Starts Blocking Encrypted DNS Protocols DoH and DoT Across Major ISPs
Privacy & Surveillance
Aeroflot to Accept Digital Rubles for Ticket Purchases Starting September 2026
OtherRussian ISPs Begin Disrupting Encrypted DNS Services from Google and Cloudflare
Users of several major Russian internet providers have reported widespread issues accessing encrypted DNS protocols offered by Google and Cloudflare. The affected services include DNS over HTTPS (DoH) and DNS over TLS (DoT), which are designed to prevent providers from inspecting domain queries. Measurements show that connections to Cloudflare addresses 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1 on port 853 establish TCP handshakes but are then reset with ECONNRESET errors before TLS authentication completes. Google Public DNS endpoints experience different interference, with sessions stalling after the TLS ClientHello or terminating with unexpected EOF errors. The disruptions have been observed across Rostelecom, Dom.ru, Tattelecom, and SkyNet subscribers, with varying impact depending on region and operator. Tattelecom support reportedly advised one customer to disable both protocols to restore connectivity. No official confirmation of centralized blocking has been issued, yet the coordinated pattern across multiple providers suggests deliberate interference rather than random failure.
Rostelecom Outage Triggers 29-Minute Mass Disruptions Across Russian Internet Services
A 29-minute failure in Rostelecom's data transmission network on August 6 caused widespread access problems to Russian online services. The operator quickly rerouted traffic to backup equipment, restoring normal operations without revealing the root cause. Users reported issues connecting to marketplaces, banks, social platforms, IT company services and other telecom providers. The majority of complaints originated from Rostelecom's own subscribers who experienced connection and service access failures. Although the incident remained brief and did not escalate into prolonged digital disruption, it highlighted the heavy reliance on a single major provider. The event demonstrated how even a short technical problem at a large operator can simultaneously affect access to stores, financial services and everyday online platforms.
Star in the Machine Fog: How AI Became Weapon, Target and Voice in the Browser
AppSec engineer Yuri Tumanov from Rostelecom, together with Igor Korkin of Positive Technologies and Oksana Dokuchaeva of FMBA Russia, examines how generative AI reshapes attack economics and defensive controls. The article outlines five distinct roles of AI in cybersecurity: accelerator of attacks, trusted assistant under compromise, leakage vector, protective shield, and direct target of prompt injection and data poisoning. It stresses that AI does not invent new threats but removes friction from social engineering, code generation and tool orchestration while expanding the attack surface through browser sessions, retrieval corpora and agent permissions. The authors advocate deterministic policy engines, provenance tracking, step-up approvals and device posture checks rather than relying on system prompts alone. The piece is framed as a cyberpunk narrative grounded in real AppSec, blue-team and threat-modeling practices for authorized testing environments.
Russia's Supreme Court Bans Silent Crow and Cyberpartisans BY as Extremist Organizations
The Supreme Court of the Russian Federation has officially recognized the hacker groups Silent Crow and Cyberpartisans BY as extremist organizations and banned their activities in Russia. The closed-door ruling, issued at the request of the General Prosecutor's Office, accuses both groups of conducting joint cyberattacks against Russian and Belarusian critical information infrastructure with the aim of destabilizing the political situation and achieving an unconstitutional change of government. Cyberpartisans BY are described as part of the Belarusian association Supratsiv, which allegedly seeks a violent overthrow of the constitutional order, and are linked to the banned Polk named after Kastus Kalinouski as well as Ukrainian military information-psychological operations units. Silent Crow, previously known as CyberWar and Cyber LegionsUA, is portrayed as a pro-Ukrainian collective of politically motivated hacktivists whose primary objective is to damage Russian state bodies, companies, and critical infrastructure. Both groups are held responsible for attacks on Aeroflot IT systems, Rostelecom databases, Rosreestr servers, and the Belarusian Railway infrastructure. Participation in or support for these organizations now carries legal liability under Russian law.