Hackers caught the wave – Business – Kommersant

On February 22, radio stations belonging to Gazprom-Media Radio and other private media were hacked, as a result of which a false air raid alert sounded on the air. Gazprom Media Holding clarified that the attack was carried out through the “infrastructure of a satellite operator.” The incident may push the regulator to tighten control over cybersecurity in the media, experts warn.

In a number of regions of Russia, including the Moscow region, the Nizhny Novgorod region, Kazan, Tula, on the morning of February 22, a number of radio stations were subjected to a hacker attack. As a result of the hack, a false air alert and a missile strike warning were sounded on the air. Messages about this began to arrive in the “112” system from eight in the morning Moscow time. According to regional media, the broadcast was hacked from Avtoradio, Comedy Radio and Radio Energy (part of Gazprom Media Holding, GPMH), Police Wave, and others.

The Ministry of Emergency Situations of Tatarstan reported that hackers attacked the servers of commercial radio stations and hacked them, after which an air raid alert sounded: “Reports about it were not true” (see “Kommersant” dated February 22). According to Gazprom-Media Radio, whose stations were mostly attacked, the hack took place on the satellite operator’s infrastructure, as a result of which “an unauthorized tie-in” is going on the air. In the “Police wave” did not answer “Kommersant”.

According to the Avtoradio website, the Gazprom-Media Radio media works with satellites Eutelsat W4 (French operator Eutelsat), Intelsat 904 and Intelsat 17 (international operator) and Yamal-201 (was made by order of Gascom, includes at PJSC Gazprom). The company did not specify which operator providing the satellite signal was attacked.

A satellite signal can indeed be used to carry out an attack, says Dmitry Petrov, CEO of the Comfortel telecom operator.

According to him, technically, the regional signals of the satellite could be substituted, which can be done by hacking the server that processes the signal, “then the information is replaced, in this case, the audio file.” Malefactors could get access to the keys, allowing to encrypt the package of radio stations transmitted to the satellite, and “crush” with their signal the one that is distributed by Avtoradio, suggests AltegroSky Group General Director Sergey Pekhterev: “The fact that this happened in several cities at the same time indicates that that the interference was introduced precisely into the structure of the signal, and not created “on the ground””. He said that the signal for this had to be stronger than international standards allow: “As a rule, regulators deal with such stories, in Russia this is the Main Radio Frequency Center.”

The mass false information that resulted from the attack could be critical for the population, so measures to prevent the recurrence of such incidents will be taken without delay, Mr. Petrov believes: “This is in the interests of the GPMC management and their IT department.” Politically motivated hackers were behind the majority of attacks in 2022, Aleksey Novikov, director of the Positive Technologies security expert center, recalls: “With such attacks, criminals are trying to cause public outcry and panic among the population.”

Tatyana Isakova