Ukranian Hackers Managed to Nearly Destroy Russian Internet Provider

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

The hacking group, called Ukrainian Cyber Alliance, took credit for the attack, saying the St. Petersburg-based Nodex “was completely looted and wiped… while the empty equipment without backups was left to them.” Cyberattacks have long been a domain of countries like Russia and North Korea, using them to infiltrate domestic infrastructure like utility grids and, in the case of North Korea, even steal cryptocurrency to fund nuclear weapon development.

TechCrunch earlier reported on the Ukranian attack and wrote that Nodex remains offline as of Wednesday evening.

The attack comes as Russia continues testing the possibility of cutting off its citizens from the global web in favor of its own restricted, sovereign network. Last year, Russia’s federal internet regulatory agency, Roskomnadzor, restricted global internet access for a day in several regions of the country, particularly Muslim-majority ones, even preventing VPNs from reaching servers outside the country.

The Kremlin understandably wants to manage the flow of information available to citizens during its ongoing war with Ukraine. Information on the war is heavily censored, with severe punishments for referring to it as anything other than a “special operation.”

YouTube has remained accessible in Russia but with regular significant outages and slowdowns that critics say are the result of intentional throttling by the government to prevent viewing of certain content. Russia surely hopes that by cutting off websites outside of its control, citizens will not stumble onto content that contradicts the Kremlin’s narrative and will only consider views that it deems acceptable. News operations spreading Western ideas like Radio Free Europe, and online influence campaigns through social media can be neutered if Russians are simply cut off from their reach.

Which is all to say, attacks on internet networks by Ukranian groups may not be effective for long if Russia moves forward with unplugging its ISPs from the rest of the world, further splintering the world into disconnected silos.

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