Multiple Russian government websites hacked in a supply chain attack

Threat actors hacked Russian federal agencies’ websites in a supply chain attack involving the compromise of a stats widget.

Some Russian federal agencies’ websites were compromised in a supply chain attack, threat actors compromised the stats widget used to track the number of visitors by several government agencies. Threat actors were able to deface the websites and block access to them.

“Disruptions in the operation of the federal agencies’ websites occurred on Tuesday evening due to the hacking of the service (widget) of the monitoring system of state agencies’ websites, which is being maintained by the Ministry of Economic Development and is integrated into the websites of a number of state agencies, the press service for the Russian Ministry of Digital Development, Communications, and Mass Media told Interfax.” reported the Interfax.

The compromised service was restored within an hour of the hack.

The hacked websites included the websites of the Energy Ministry, the Federal State Statistics Service, the Federal Penitentiary Service, the Federal Bailiff Service, the Federal Antimonopoly Service, the Culture Ministry, and other Russian state agencies.

“The websites of state agencies are under serious protection and round-the-clock monitoring by cybersecurity teams. It is difficult to compromise these websites directly, so hackers attack resources through external services and thus gain access to demonstrate incorrect content,” the press service said.

“Hackers hacked an application (widget), which is loaded on the websites of state bodies from an external resource, the press service added. After hacking the widget, hackers were able to publish incorrect content on the pages of the websites. The incident was promptly localized.”

The impacted websites displayed an image against the current invasion of Ukraine.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Russia supply chain attack)

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