Rostelecom

Rostelecom Calls for 'Doomsday' Data Centers to Counter Drone Attacks and Infrastructure Risks

Rostelecom executive Valery Ermakov has urged Russian companies to build geographically distributed backup data centers, dubbed 'doomsday' facilities, to ensure service recovery after site losses. The recommendation follows drone strikes that disabled three Yandex data centers in Sasovo, Kaluga, and Vladimir, disrupting both internal services and Yandex Cloud clients. Ermakov explained that previous centralized infrastructure, built for economic efficiency, is no longer viable under changed threat models that now include physical attacks previously considered unthinkable. He advocated a micro-cellular architecture with services spread across many sites connected by high-speed links, while warning that Russian backbone networks are overloaded and much fiber optic infrastructure dates back 20-30 years. Rostelecom positioned its TEA NEXT line running from Kaliningrad to Mongolia as a source of additional capacity to address potential backbone shortages. Yandex responded to the incidents by accelerating client data migration to partner cloud providers.

Metascan Confirms Limited Data Breach After Two-Minute Telegram Bot Compromise

Metascan has publicly acknowledged a data breach involving internal materials obtained through a compromised Telegram bot token. The attacker gained access to a corporate Telegram chat for approximately two minutes on September 5 and exported a small set of documents before being removed. The incident stemmed from an overlooked bot token on test virtual machines after an employee departure. Among the leaked items were two pilot project reports from July 2026 that mentioned major Russian organizations including Transneft, Selectel, Lenta, Sberbank, and Rostelecom. Metascan attributed the leak to a former employee now working with a competitor and rejected claims of deliberately hidden vulnerabilities. The company has accepted full responsibility, outlined corrective measures, and launched a bug bounty program.

Russia Starts Blocking Encrypted DNS Protocols DoH and DoT Across Major ISPs

Since mid-August 2026, subscribers of Rostelecom, Dom.ru, Tattelecom, SkyNet and Beeline have reported sudden failures of encrypted DNS services from Google and Cloudflare. The blocking affects both DoT on port 853 and DoH on port 443, but the mechanisms differ: DoT connections receive TCP RST packets while DoH sessions are silently dropped after the TLS ClientHello. Analysis shows the interference originates from TSPU equipment performing DPI on SNI fields and known resolver domains. At the same time, ordinary UDP DNS queries are being intercepted and answered by the NSIDI infrastructure, returning NXDOMAIN for blocked domains. The changes indicate a centrally coordinated rollout of new filtering rules rather than isolated operator actions. Users are advised that encrypted DNS no longer provides reliable privacy or circumvention and that full VPN tunnels remain the only robust option.

Aeroflot to Accept Digital Rubles for Ticket Purchases Starting September 2026

From September 1 2026 Aeroflot will begin accepting digital rubles as a payment method for airline tickets both on its website and in company sales offices. Customers choosing the new option online will see a QR code generated by the site that must be scanned in a participating bank application. The payment is then confirmed from the digital wallet hosted on the Bank of Russia platform and an electronic ticket plus receipt are issued automatically. The same QR-based flow will be used at physical ticket counters where the code appears on the terminal. Ordinary bank cards and other payment methods remain fully available and no physical digital cash is required. On the same date MTS will start accepting digital rubles through MTS Pay while Rostelecom and Megafon are also preparing their systems. Russian authorities have clarified that the digital ruble is the third official form of the national currency alongside cash and non-cash funds rather than a cryptocurrency.

Russian 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.