Russia's Supreme Court Bans Silent Crow and Cyberpartisans BY as Extremist Organizations
The Supreme Court of the Russian Federation has recognized the cybercriminal groups Silent Crow (also known as the Silent Crow) and Cyberpartisans BY as extremist organizations and prohibited their activities on Russian territory. The decision is subject to immediate enforcement following a closed session in which the court granted an administrative claim filed by the General Prosecutor's Office.
According to the ruling, both groups conducted coordinated attacks on the information infrastructure of Russia and Belarus. Their stated goals, as presented by the authorities, include destabilizing the socio-political situation and effecting an unconstitutional change of state power.
The court established that Cyberpartisans BY belong to the Belarusian association Supratsiv (Resistance), which advocates the violent alteration of the republic's constitutional order. The group was further connected to the Polk named after Kastus Kalinouski, already banned in Russia, and to a subunit of information-psychological operations within the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Silent Crow, previously operating under the names CyberWar and Cyber LegionsUA, is characterized in the judgment as a pro-Ukrainian alliance of politically motivated hacktivists. Its principal objective, according to the court, is to inflict damage on Russian government agencies, commercial enterprises, and critical information infrastructure.
The groups are accused of carrying out cyberattacks against the IT systems of Aeroflot, databases belonging to Rostelecom and Rosreestr, as well as servers of the Belarusian Railway. As a result of the ruling, both Silent Crow and Cyberpartisans BY now hold not only a digital but also an official extremist status in Russia, making participation in their activities or provision of support subject to criminal or administrative liability.
Related articles
Alfa-Bank Balances Cloud Trust and Zero Trust Models During Migration to Yandex Cloud
Alfa-Bank's head of container and cloud security, Sasha Chertok, detailed how the bank migrated regulated workloads to Yandex Cloud while preserving existing Zero Trust controls. The organization mapped on-premises network segmentation, Active Directory authentication, and firewall policies directly onto Yandex Cloud resources using interconnect links secured with GOST encryption. Responsibility for managed services is shared under a Cloud Trust model, yet the bank retains oversight through Terraform-managed Security Groups, custom CSPM checks, and internal CI/CD gates. User access continues to authenticate via on-premises Active Directory and KeyCloak federations, while authorization leverages granular Yandex Cloud IAM roles. Logging and detection rely on a combination of Yandex Cloud Audit Trail, Cloud Logging, and the YCDR service to compensate for incomplete control-plane visibility. The resulting hybrid architecture now supports 1,500 virtual machines, 100 managed services, and 1,000 identities across multiple environments without disrupting established security processes.
EnvSpec Naming Standard Introduces Strict Six-Environment Hierarchy for Zero Trust Infrastructure
The EnvSpec Naming 1.0.0 standard proposes replacing ad-hoc hostnames with a strict hierarchical naming system based on environment, perimeter, system, slot and node. It defines exactly six environments—dev, test, stage, prod, infrastructure and workplace—and treats any test or pilot system processing real data as prod. The model projects names into SPIFFE IDs, Kubernetes namespaces, cloud projects and mandatory tags for automated policy enforcement. Rules prohibit direct communication between different linear environments and require all access from workplace devices through dedicated gateways. The standard is published under CC BY-SA 4.0 and includes machine-checkable criteria for compliance.
Russian Woman Fined 30,000 Rubles and Loses iPhone 11 for Posting AI-Generated Bear Photo
A resident of Duldurga village in Zabaykalsky Krai was fined 30,000 rubles under part 9 of article 13.15 of the Russian Code of Administrative Offenses for publishing an AI-generated image of a bear presented as authentic. The court also ordered confiscation of her iPhone 11 as the instrument of the administrative violation. The woman knew the photograph was fake before posting it, yet the image spread widely online and was even shared by a local Ministry of Natural Resources channel on 10 September. Local authorities used the case to warn residents that publishing neural-network-generated fake images carries real legal consequences. The incident highlights ongoing enforcement of Russian legislation against the distribution of knowingly false socially significant information under the guise of credible reports. Meanwhile, wildlife specialists continue to investigate separate reports of actual bears near populated areas in the region.
Inserting Contracts into ChatGPT Risks Major Fines Under Russia's 152-FZ Personal Data Law
A detailed analysis examines the legal consequences of uploading contracts containing personal data into foreign AI services such as ChatGPT under Russian Federal Law 152-FZ. The article clarifies that even standard supply agreements include names, positions, passport details, INN numbers, phones and emails that qualify as personal data. It breaks down applicable administrative penalties from Article 13.11 of the Code of Administrative Offenses, including 150-300 thousand rubles for processing without a proper legal basis and separate fines for failing to notify Roskomnadzor. Cross-border transfer rules under Article 12 require a dedicated notification to the regulator before sending data to services hosted in the United States or European Union. The piece also reviews recent court practice, including a Moscow district court ruling that treated uploading commercial information to DeepSeek as disclosure of trade secrets. No criminal liability under Article 272.1 of the Criminal Code applies to ordinary business use, yet the absence of a data processing agreement with OpenAI or similar providers creates ongoing compliance exposure.