425/68 Monday, October 27, 2025
The Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Surveillance, under Russia’s Ministry of Agriculture, suffered a major DDoS attack that temporarily disrupted its agricultural and chemical tracking systems, VetIS and Saturn. The incident severely impacted food transportation across the country, particularly the Mercury subsystem, which is used to issue electronic veterinary certificates required for the shipment of meat, dairy, and baby food products. As a result, many large producers experienced significant delivery delays.
Rosselkhoznadzor confirmed that no data was leaked during the incident and stated that it is working with telecom providers Megafon, Rostelecom, and Intelsk to filter out malicious traffic. The agency reported that the attack began on October 22, 2025, at 8:40 a.m. and may have caused intermittent system access issues in certain regions. It rejected claims that Mercury was completely offline, emphasizing that more than 14.5 million veterinary documents were still issued that day.
Industry sources in Russia’s retail sector revealed that some food producers had to negotiate with retail chains to ship goods without electronic documentation, while several retail associations switched Mercury into emergency mode to maintain operations. This incident marks the fourth attack on the Mercury system in 2025, following a June disruption that forced dairy producers to temporarily revert to paper certificates. So far, no group has claimed responsibility for the attack.
