For the third day, the transport company PEC has been living with a "technical failure," which is in fact the result of a hacker attack. Sources in the management of the VChK-OGPU and Rucriminal.info say that PEC's digital infrastructure is struggling to get back up and running: the digital data on which everything was built simply doesn't exist. Cargo accounting systems, financial documents, shipping invoices, customer data—the attackers have leaked literally everything.
And now thousands of trucks are actually transporting who knows what and who knows where. And whether they're transporting anything at all is also questionable. Tens of thousands of shipments are currently getting mixed up in sorting centers, being sent to the wrong locations, and getting lost as unaccounted for in the depths of warehouses. Trying to somehow streamline operations, PEC has switched to a paper-based workflow. But it's unclear how to sort, redistribute, ship, and deliver the cargo. Perhaps they're marking boxes with markers and sending Excel spreadsheets via personal email.
For the company, this is nothing short of a disaster—survival is almost impossible. PEC is already short of cash—accounting for its financial statements, net profit for 2024 was 15 million rubles, with revenue of almost 37 billion. Taking out a loan to cover payments will be even more expensive, and their reputation will no longer allow it.
And then the logistics company will be crushed by a wave of justified claims from customers, who will almost certainly file lawsuits en masse for damages. This includes lost cargo, fines from marketplaces, breaches of tender obligations, and so on down the list. No one can say how much the damage will be, but it will certainly be enormous and certainly worse than the collapse of SDEK, which at least managed to recover through franchisees and piece together the pieces of its databases.
Another problem in the aftermath of the hacker attack itself is that the data of hundreds of thousands of clients will soon end up on the dark web. This will result in a government fine: the president called for maintaining personal data security. And new lawsuits from clients will follow.
Where will the money come from? According to Rucriminal.info sources, PEC will first and foremost try, with difficulty, to shift all payments for client problems to insurers and is already preparing documentation for this. SberStrakhovanie, Pari, EnergoGarant, and VSK are among those affected. It's unclear whether they'll be able to shift the blame from the sick to the healthy.
The outcome is predictable in any case. The main question is who PEC will be the first to drag down, if not into the abyss, then into a sea of problems. If blaming the problems on the insurers doesn't work, then partners, contractors, hired transport companies, and landlords will be eliminated. At first, logisticians will try to pay off their clients and the government, so the categories listed above will simply have nothing left.
