Ukrainian hackers managed to almost destroy the Russian Internet provider

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

The hacking group, called the Ukrainian Cyber ​​Alliance, claimed responsibility for the attack, saying the St. Petersburg-based Nodex network had been “looted and completely wiped… while they were left with empty equipment without backups.” Cyberattacks have long been the domain of countries like Russia and North Korea, using them to hack local infrastructure like utility networks and, in North Korea’s case, even steal cryptocurrencies to fund nuclear weapons development.

TechCrunch I previously reported on the Ukrainian attack and wrote that Nodex was still offline as of Wednesday evening.

The attack comes as Russia continues to test the possibility of isolating its citizens from the global Internet in favor of its own restricted sovereign network. Last year, Russia’s federal internet regulatory agency, Roskomnadzor, Restrict access to the global Internet For a day in several regions of the country, especially those with a Muslim majority, even blocking VPNs from accessing servers outside the country.

It is understandable that the Kremlin would want to manage the flow of information available to citizens during its ongoing war with Ukraine. Information about the war is tightly controlled, with severe penalties imposed for referring to it as anything other than a “special operation.”

YouTube has remained available in Russia but with regular outages and significant slowdowns that critics say are a result Intentional suffocation By the government to prevent the display of certain content. Russia certainly hopes that blocking websites outside its control will mean that citizens will not stumble upon content that contradicts the Kremlin’s narrative and will only consider views they consider acceptable. News operations that spread Western ideas, such as Radio Free Europe and online influence campaigns through social media, could be neutralized if the Russians were simply cut off from their reach.

This means that attacks on internet networks by Ukrainian groups may not be effective for long if Russia goes ahead with separating internet service providers from the rest of the world, further dividing the world into separate silos.