#Disrupted- Russian Alcohol Supply Chain Disrupted By Hacktivists

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Attackers from the  IT Army of Ukraine have successfully targeted EGAIS, Russia's main alcohol distribution portal, to thwart alcohol transport in Russia. 

 According to Russian news portal Vedomosti, Ukrainian hacktivist launched a DDoS attack on May 2-3, destroying Russia's central alcohol distribution platform called the Unified National Automatic Alcohol Accounting Information System (EGAIS). 

 EGAIS is an important portal. This is because the law requires all alcohol manufacturers and distributors to register their shipments with EGAIS. Therefore, the attack on this platform caused a full-scale service interruption across Russia.

Details of the Attack

Three websites belonging to the platform were reportedly attacked by DDoS. When I checked on May 4th, I got the error "Server stopped responding" on two EGAIS sites, and the third one wasn't working. The 

 attack began on May 2, and the next day, more and more system failures became apparent. Wine Merchant Fort claimed that there was a service interruption on May 4, and representatives of the Alcohol Producers Association Igor Kosarev and Radga claimed the same. Alexander Lipirin, 

 Fort General Manager, said on May 4th  that 70% of the invoices could not be uploaded to EGAIS. The Beluga Group, a strong alcoholic beverage maker, has not reported any issues with EGAIS. 

 This issue was partially resolved on the morning of May 4th. Of the 1,500 documents queued in Radga, 600 were sent to the system. This issue should be completely resolved within 2 days. Vadim Drobiz, director of 

 CIFFRA (Federal and Regional Alcohol Market Research Center), said the EGAIS attack did not affect end consumers as the store stored alcohol before the holidays.

Widespread Impact of the Attack

The entire EGAIS system was shut down, resulting in an interruption in the alcohol supply chain  during the May vacation. Vedomosti further stated that the DDoS attack continued until May 4, and manufacturers and suppliers were unable to contact technical support to correct delays or complete invoices or orders. 

 According to Russian news portal Vedomosti, many companies have failed to deliver to retail chains. The factory didn't get a tank full of alcohol, but the restaurant couldn't upload the receipt.

“Due to a large-scale failure, factories cannot accept tanks with alcohol, and customers, stores, and distributors cannot receive finished products that have already been delivered to them,” Vedomosti reported.

One of the companies affected by the closure of the EGAIS portal has announced that it will suspend all purchases as its warehouse is full. The outage mainly affected the distribution of vodka, but wine companies also reported business disruptions.

Ukrainian Hacktivists Claim Responsibility

Ukrainian hacktivists, especially the Disbalancer group, have claimed responsibility for the attack and announced  plans to launch further attacks on the platform. It is worth noting that the Ukrainian IT Army has previously announced that it will attack EGAIS servers on  Telegram channels such as check. egais. ru, egais. ru and service. egais. ru portals. 

 The Ukrainian IT Army is a special cyber unit recruiting volunteers from around the world to launch cyber attacks on Russian infrastructure / units.

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