Team OneFist Knocks Off Phone Services, Causes Power Outages In Russia Ahead Of Putin Speech

Before Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered his speech Wednesday, Team OneFist prepared a meaningful surprise too remarkable to ignore as it came in the form of a series of cyber offensives. The first one is the attack on a core private branch exchange (PBX), which covers the greater, if not all, of Udmurtia.

The PBX links its subscribers, ranging from businesses, government institutions and private individuals, to the greater telephone network in Russia. With a guide on how to best attack PBXs and the realization that they only have a small window to launch the attack, Team Onefist executed the strike that lasted for about 24 minutes.

"The attack on the Udmurtia PBX phone switch knocked out phone services for the entire region of 1.5 million, as the PBX routed all call types (Cellular, VoIP and landline). The switch was mind-wiped of all configs and will have to be rebuilt. The outage will last at least 18-36 hours," Voltage Team OneFist's founder added, highlighting that "All 6,256 lines of configuration data were erased from flash, bricking the PBX."

Thraxman also underlined the other significances of the attack. "What made this especially important is that the capital of Udmurtia, Izhevsk, is where the famous Kalashnikov Concern is based and has its factories," he said. "Aside from producing guns, they also make laser-guided artillery projectiles of the Krasnopol (152 mm) and Kitolov-2M (122 mm) types, as well as drones - ZALA, the most important Russian drone manufacturer, is a subsidiary of Kalashnikov," he added.

In addition to the Udmurtia PBX attack under Operation Conan, Team OneFist also launched Operation Thunderstrike a few hours later. Aimed to cause disruption and critical power outages across Russia, the team corrupted, disabled and destroyed 42 different APC and Schneider UPS (Battery backup) systems.

This includes the core data center of Nline, a wi-max license (for broadcasting and telecommunication) provider in Russia, a data center of Pskov State University, Vyborg campus of Leningrad State University, a data center for Shokolad'e, a chocolate company in Krasnodar.

The attack also impacted Europa Plus Radio's office in Murmansk, and multiple data centers across Russia, including the Tattelecom data center. The UPS attack also hit data centers in Kursk, Moscow, Samara, Sochi, Rostov, Yekaterinburg, Taganrog, and Pskov.

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Team OneFist Knocks Off Phone Services, Causes Power Outages In Russia Ahead Of Putin Speech

“The attack was timed to coincide with Putler’s speech...and we had to delay the attack when his speech was pushed back,” Team OneFist said.

International Business TimesNica Osorio