Major Russian Government Services Hit by Cyberattacks from Abroad

Several major Russian state services went offline on Tuesday after what officials described as a large-scale cyberattack from outside the country. The disruptions were reportedly caused by a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, which floods systems with traffic to make them unusable.

According to outage-tracking site Downdetector, key services were still facing issues at the time of reporting. These included Russia’s Federal Tax Service (FNS), a digital key management service called Goskey, and the document system Saby.

Both Saby and FNS confirmed they had been targeted in the attack and said they were working to fix the problems and restore access.

Russian businesses also faced trouble accessing other government systems, including one that oversees alcohol sales and another used to track the production of goods to prevent fake products.

This comes just a week after a major cyber outage affected banking apps, messaging platforms, Yandex services, and mobile networks across Russia. St. Petersburg-based telecom firm Severen-Telecom confirmed it had been hit by a DDoS attack. However, Russia’s telecom watchdog Roskomnadzor has not revealed what caused the earlier problems.

So far, no hacker group has taken responsibility for the latest attack. In the past, Ukraine-linked hacktivists like the “IT Army” have carried out similar cyberattacks on Russian systems.

Also last week, a private hospital in Russia suffered a multi-day outage. A pro-Ukraine hacker group called 4B1D claimed it targeted software used to manage patient records. The hospital didn’t share full details, but local officials confirmed patient data systems were attacked.

On Tuesday, Moscow’s health department also reported technical issues, saying some people were temporarily unable to access their medical records. They didn’t say if this was related to a cyberattack.

These latest disruptions came just days after U.S. President Donald Trump spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin in a two-hour call discussing the possibility of a ceasefire in Ukraine. It’s unclear whether the timing of the cyberattacks was connected to that political event or just a coincidence.