Major Russian economic reports will be delayed through at least Nov. 13 following a recent major hack on the statistics agency Rosstat.
Rosstat failed to publish two scheduled weekly price releases as scheduled on Friday, postponing them repeatedly before finally issuing the data. Some previously published information is also absent from the Rosstat website.
The agency said it’s continuing to restore systems after a cyberattack knocked parts of its infrastructure offline, without providing more detail.
“To ensure data security, some parts of the infrastructure remain isolated. This is necessary to allow thorough checks and a phased restoration of access,” the agency said on Thursday. “As a result, some website functions and parts of the IT infrastructure may be temporarily unavailable.”
While its website has resumed operating, deadlines for companies to submit statistical reports have been extended through Nov. 13. The longer collection period may result in further delays to individual data releases, the agency said.
The Belarusian pro-opposition group Cyber Partisans and the hacker operation Silent Crow claimed on Nov. 1 that they’d breached Rosstat’s internal infrastructure, gaining access to about 25,000 computers and extracting some 23 terabytes of data, including information on Russian military losses in the war against Ukraine.
Rosstat said that targeted cyberattacks on its systems were detected between Oct. 29 and Nov. 1, but that it found no evidence its databases had been compromised or confidential information leaked.
Since President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022, the Kremlin has steadily restricted public access to official data, withholding or classifying an expanding range of information, including many economic and demographic indicators.