Megafon suffered a hacker attack

On May 12, Megafon was hacked. This was anonymously reported to Meduza by several employees of the company. The press service of Megafon confirmed the fact of the attack.

Pyotr Lidov, director of public relations at MegaFon, told Meduza that “it all looks like in England,” where hospitals were attacked on May 12. “Computers were encrypted and asked for a ransom. The layout is the same,” he said.

According to Lidov, the attack did not affect the quality of communication, but it affected customer service - computers were turned off for security reasons, and operators cannot log into user accounts. He later told TASS that the call center had restored work.

Lidov noted that there are “quite a lot” of infected computers, but he could not provide accurate data on the spread of the virus, explaining that Megafon is “a huge company.”

On the evening of May 12, it also became known that the computers of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in several regions of Russia were attacked. This information has not been officially confirmed.

Representatives of the Svyaznoy network told Meduza that they are “aware of the problem” and are “taking steps to prevent the virus from penetrating the company’s computers.” The Vimpelcom company (Beeline brand) stated that they "successfully repelled attack attempts."

Also on May 12, it became known about a similar attack on the Spanish company Telefonica. Cybersecurity experts report at least 36,000 detected infections worldwide; most of them are in Russia, Ukraine and Taiwan.