A group of Ukrainian hackers known as Cyber.Anarchy.Squad claimed responsibility for an attack that brought down Russian telecommunications provider Infotel JSC on Thursday evening.

Among other things, Moscow-based Infotel provides connectivity services between the Russian Central Bank and other Russian banks, online shops and credit institutions.

Following yesterday’s attack, several major banks across Russia had their access cut off from the country’s banking systems so they could no longer make online payments, such as Ukrainian news site Economichna Pravda reported for the first time.

Infotel confirmed the incident on its website, saying it is currently working to restore systems that were damaged in what it described as a “massive” attack.

“We would like to inform you that as a result of a massive hacker attack on the Infotel JSC network, some network equipment has been damaged,” the Russian company said. said.

“Restoration work is currently in progress. Additional deadlines for the completion of the work will be announced. We count on your understanding and your future cooperation.”

While Infotel or their attackers have not yet shared the attack timeline, Georgia Tech’s Internet Outage Detection and Analysis (IODA) project show that the Internet service provider of the Central Bank of Russia went down on June 8, around 11:00 UTC.

IODA also confirms that the Russian company is working on restoring its systems, and that it was still offline 34 hours after being knocked down.

“All their infrastructure has been destroyed, there is nothing alive,” the Ukrainian hacktivists said on their Telegram channel when they announced the attack yesterday.

“In total, the company has about four hundred customers, a quarter of which are banks, the rest are credit institutions, car dealerships.”

As evidence of their attacks, they posted screenshots of alleged access to Infotel’s network, including a network diagram and what appears to be a compromised email account.

It’s a recurring pattern for Ukrainian hacking group Cyber.Anarchy.Squad, which has targeted other Russian companies since it surfaced after Russia invaded Ukraine.

In particular, last year the group leaked online databases stolen from the hacked systems of a Russian retailer and a jewelry manufacturer.

The leaked databases contained millions of records containing information belonging to the companies’ employees and customers, as well as internal company emails.