Hackers claim theft of 23 terabytes from Russia's statistics agency Rosstat

Russia's state statistics agency Rosstat confirmed Sunday that its websites were struck by a coordinated cyberattack between 29 October and 1 November, as two hacking groups claimed to have stolen 23 terabytes of data — including figures on Russian losses in the war in Ukraine.

Messages from the Belarusian Cyber Partisans and Silent Crow appeared on Rosstat's main website and regional portals. One message, in Belarusian, read: "No one will escape accountability." Both groups are designated as extremist and banned in Russia.

Rosstat said the attacks were carefully planned, targeting several areas simultaneously and involving specialists with different expertise operating from a wide range of locations. The agency denied that any databases or legally protected information had been leaked, saying its monitoring systems detected suspicious activity in time for staff to respond. Its main website was inaccessible at the time of reporting.

The hackers claimed the stolen files contained data on Russian wartime losses, demographic and economic statistics, and documents marked "for official use only." The claims could not be independently verified.

Rosstat's methodology includes a category for deaths resulting from military operations, but the agency stopped publishing its annual cause-of-death statistics in 2024. The same two groups claimed an attack on Aeroflot's IT systems in July 2024. In January 2025, Silent Crow claimed to have stolen a database of 2 billion records on property owners from state real estate registry Rosreestr; the agency denied a leak, though journalists verified some published data.