Digital disruptions continue for Russian transportation, this time at state railway
Russia’s state-owned railway, RZD, reported being the target of a cyberattack that temporarily disrupted its website and mobile application.
It’s the second incident this week involving a Russian transportation agency, following disruptions with the app and website for Moscow’s subway system on Monday.
In a statement on Tuesday, RZD confirmed that its online services were unavailable due to a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. However, ticket sales remained operational at physical offices across stations and terminals, the company added.
“We are working to restore their operation as quickly as possible,” the statement read. RZD hasn’t provided any details about the scale of the attack or when it will be able to restore its services. DDoS incidents flood websites with junk traffic, with the goal of blocking access to them.
As of the time of writing, outage monitoring site Downdetector showed ongoing disruptions to RZD’s digital platforms. Russian users have reported being unable to load the railway’s app and website or purchase tickets online.
The perpetrator behind the attack remains unknown. The two incidents in Russia follow a recent attack by suspected Russian hackers on Ukraine’s national railway operator, Ukrzaliznytsia. That attack disrupted the railway’s mobile app and website, which are primarily used for ticket purchases, but did not affect train schedules.
In a statement on Tuesday, Ukrainian cyber officials said the hackers behind the Ukrzaliznytsia hack used unique malware “developed with the specifics of the targeted infrastructure in mind.” They noted that such a cyberattack required significant resources and preparation.
RZD has previously faced attacks on its digital services. Earlier this year, the pro-Ukrainian hacker group CyberSec claimed responsibility for leaking data from RZD’s corporate portal. The leak reportedly included over half a million records, containing employees’ names, titles, phone numbers, email addresses, and vacation dates for 2025. RZD has not commented on the hack.
Daryna Antoniuk
is a reporter for Recorded Future News based in Ukraine. She writes about cybersecurity startups, cyberattacks in Eastern Europe and the state of the cyberwar between Ukraine and Russia. She previously was a tech reporter for Forbes Ukraine. Her work has also been published at Sifted, The Kyiv Independent and The Kyiv Post.