Russian aviation authority switches to paper after losing 65TB of data

Rosaviatsiya has switched to pen and paper after losing 65TB of data. According to sources, it suffered a major cyberattack on Saturday.

The Federal Air Transport Agency Rosaviatsiya is responsible for overseeing the civil aviation industry in Russia. Its website favt.ru went offline on Monday and has been unreachable since.

"Due to the temporary lack of access to the Internet and a malfunction in the electronic document management system of the Federal Air Transport Agency, the Federal Air Transport Agency is switching to a paper version," reads the Rosaviatsiya statement signed by the agency's head Alexander Neradko.

Russian Telegram channel Aviatorshina said that Rosaviatsiya was hit by a severe cyberattack on Saturday, leading to the collapse of its entire network. Documents, mail, files were allegedly erased – approximately 65 TB of data was been lost.

According to Aviatorshina’s source close to the matter, the agency lost a 1,5-year-worth of emails and has no backups to restore its system. The source also said that the prosecutor's office and the FSB have been working with Rosaviatsiya since Saturday.

Russian media outlet Kommersant quotes two independent sources close to the agency. They confirm that outages were likely caused by a cyberattack. The agency has presumably regained its access to the email service and expects to fully restore access to its data storage soon.

Meanwhile, Rosaviatsiya keeps posting updates on its social media channels, including Telegram and VK, and linking to its website as if nothing happened. According to the "Is It Down Right Now" monitor, favt.ru is not down for everyone.

Experts have sounded mixed security warnings in the wake of the pullout from Russia by Microsoft and other tech giants, with some playing down the impact on ordinary citizens and others predicting a return to ‘pen and paper.’

“They will end up going back to pen and paper as computers stop operating due to lack of updates, expired licenses, and failures,” Alex Artamonov, infosecurity officer at Infinitely Virtual and a regular contributor to cyber industry trade publications, once told Cybernews.