Supermarkets, pharmacies, shops - more and more retail outlets in Russia are complaining about technical problems and IT system crashes. For customers, this means difficulties or the inability to pay or order online. What are these problems due to?
Sanctions against Russia are working
According to IT expert Mikhail Klimarev, the difficulties are a result of international sanctions. A number of companies, including in the IT sector, refuse to work with Russia and its business because of the aggressive war against Ukraine.
The authorities in Moscow are facing increasing pressure to fill the gaps that limited access to Western technologies opens. However, most IT products that are labeled "Made in Russia" are anything but high-quality. "If they were better, they would have established themselves in the information technology market. However, since they are not represented on the international market and are not competitive, they are by definition worse," Klimarev explained to ARD.
How hackers grounded 50 "Aeroflot" planes
And so it comes not only to system failures, but also to security risks that open up various opportunities for hackers. One of the latest hacker attacks is against the largest Russian airline, "Aeroflot". At the end of July, it was forced to cancel over 50 flights.
The Ukrainian hacker group Silent Crow announced that it had not only blocked the airline's system, but also gained access to sensitive documents, which it intends to publish in stages. The Russian prosecutor's office has launched an investigation "for illegal access to computer information." Even the Kremlin has expressed concern. "The information we read in the media is quite alarming. The threat from hackers continues to exist for all large companies that provide services to the population," commented Dmitry Peskov.
"Weaknesses in old software are being exploited. We found that the infrastructure of "Aeroflot" is still running (the operating systems) Windows XP and Windows 2003," commented IT expert Alexander Isavnin on a popular YouTube channel. "So malicious hackers can easily penetrate."
Silent Crow announced that they had also worked with Belarusian opposition hackers for the attack on "Aeroflot". "We are helping the Ukrainians in their fight against the occupier by conducting a cyberattack on "Aeroflot" to paralyze the largest airline in Russia," Belarusian Cyberpartisans wrote at the time.
This year alone, Silent Crow has already claimed responsibility for hacking various databases in Russia - real estate, a state-owned telecommunications company, a large insurance company, the government's IT department in Moscow, and the Russian office of the South Korean automaker KIA.
Russian IT specialists are isolated
Russia also has another serious problem related to technology - a significant part of its experts in the field have left the country. In 2022 alone, it is estimated that 170 thousand IT experts fled.
Mikhail Klimarev, with whom ARD spoke on the subject, is one of them. He lives in Germany and says that many of his colleagues in Moscow find it difficult to keep up with new developments, especially in artificial intelligence, due to international isolation. "Of course, Russia has its own specialists. But all the artificial intelligence models developed in Russia cannot even compare with the leading American or even Chinese models. This applies to all areas. If only because the necessary chips cannot be delivered. All this leads not only to hacker attacks, but also to the shaky stability of the entire infrastructure."