Moscow: Russia's flag carrier Aeroflot canceled over 40 flights after what it called an information failure. The cancellations were announced by the press service of the airline headquartered at Moscow's Sheremetyevo International Airport, which did not provide a reason behind the failure of its information systems or how long it would take to resolve the issue.

According to Anadolu Agency, passengers of canceled flights have been given the options to either receive a refund or reissue their tickets for flights within the next 10 days. The airline stated that a team of specialists is actively working to restore the normal operation of its services. Most of the canceled flights were domestic, but some included flights heading to Armenia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan.

The prosecutor general's office has attributed the failure in Aeroflot's information system to a hacker attack, and a criminal case has been registered. A hacker group called Silent Crow claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement on Telegram, alleging that it "completely destroyed" the airline's internal IT infrastructure after a "long-term and large-scale operation."

The hacker group claimed that for a year, they had been inside Aeroflot's corporate network, methodically developing access and penetrating deep into the core of the infrastructure. They alleged destruction of about 7,000 servers and the acquisition of 22 TB of information. Furthermore, they threatened to soon publish the "personal data of all Russians who have ever flown with Aeroflot."

Anadolu could not immediately verify the authenticity of the statement, and Aeroflot has not commented on the claims.