Ukrainian hackers have begun to permanently destroy the data of Russian citizens.

Pro-Ukrainian hackers are changing the tactics of cyber attacks on Russian companies and government agencies. Yan Blinov, an incident response expert at Angara MTDR, told Izvestia on May 10.

According to him, now the attackers are not aiming for a demonstrative effect, but for maximum damage to organizations. The focus has shifted to disrupting workflows, destroying data, and shutting down services, with long-term consequences for businesses.

The most notable attacks in 2025 were on Internet service providers, air carriers, transportation companies, and electronic trading platforms. According to the expert, the targets are industries where a technical failure quickly causes real harm to the economy and citizens.

"It is critical and massively used services that are the most vulnerable, and not just the classic "critical infrastructure" in the narrow sense: the more an organization is embedded in the daily life of society, the more noticeable the consequences of an attack," Blinov explained.

The expert emphasized that protection from new threats does not require radically new tools. Modern security systems are able to block most attacks, but many companies have fragmented protection. The main problems remain staff shortages, budget shortages, and the lack of well-established incident recovery processes.

Effective protection, according to the expert, should be comprehensive and include both technological solutions and staff training.

"Isolating critical segments, having immutable backups, regular recovery exercises, and raising staff awareness are especially important to protect against attacks aimed at destroying data. It is important not only to detect and localize the incident, but also the team's ability to quickly return services to working order after the attack," Blinov concluded.

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