Activists in Belarus on Monday said they had breached the country's state-run railway network and infected it with ransomware.
The team stated that they will grant the key decryption only if Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko stops aiding Russian troops in the face of a possible invasion of Ukraine.
Ars Technica reports:
Referring to the Belarus Railways, a group calling itself Cyber Partizans wrote in the Telegram:
"BelZhD, on the orders of the terrorist Lukashenko, these days allows the occupying troops to enter our land. As part of the “Peklo” cyber campaign, we encrypted most of BelZhD's servers, databases and workstations in order to slow down and disrupt transfers. The copies security have been destroyed […]."
The team announced the attack and on Twitter.
We have encryption keys, and we are ready to return Belarusian Railroad's systems to normal mode. Our conditions:
🔺 Release of the 50 political prisoners who are most in need of medical assistance.
RePreventing the presence of Russian troops on the territory of #Belarus. https://t.co/QBf0vtcNbK- Belarusian Cyber-Partisans (@cpartisans) January 24, 2022
A spokesman for the group said the Peklo cyber-campaign was aimed at specific entities and government companies in order to pressure the Belarussian government to release political prisoners and prevent Russian troops from entering Belarus to use its territory to attack Ukraine.
"The government continues to suppress the free will of Belarusians, imprison innocent people, continue to detain thousands of political prisoners. "Our main goal is to overthrow Lukashenko's regime, to maintain sovereignty and to build a democratic state governed by the rule of law, with independent institutions and the protection of human rights."
So many services on the railway site were not available. Online ticket purchases, for example, do not work.
According to reports, Russia is sending military latest technology equipment and staff by rail in Belarus, which borders Ukraine. @belzhd_live, a group of Belarusian railway workers that monitors activity on a 5.512km rail network, said on Friday that in one week, more than 33 Russian military trains loaded with equipment and troops have arrived in Belarus.