07 December 2023

TeamOneFist operation Turn Ruzzia Off

On January 15, 2023, the pro-Ukraine hacktivist group teamOneFist announced that it had conducted a cyber operation against Russia in partnership with another possible hacktivist group called RoughSec. Operation Turn Ruzzia Off reportedly took down 316 Metro and Edge routers across Russia and disabled a further 944.

To do this, the operation would have combined three missions to attack ISPs Rostelecom and Beeline, using the Dark Fiber tool, in order to create Internet and VoIP phone outages in government buildings, military installations and the homes of Oligarchs. The ultimate goal of the attack was to paralyse Russian logistics and slow down the process of troop reinforcement in Ukraine.

This attack could have a severe impact on Russian telecoms. The number of destroyed routers is extremely high and will probably take a long time to replace in terms of hardware. It is likely that Russian telecommunications will lose speed and that some institutions will have to use degraded means.

This is TeamOnefist's first major operation in almost a month. It is possible that the Russian operational surge on the ground has caused delays in the operations of the group as well as most other Ukrainian groups such as the IT Army of Ukraine which is less active than usual.