The hacktivist collective Anonymous began an offensive a all out against Russia and President Putin, ever since Kremlin troops invaded Ukraine. Hackers are stealing important data, blocking government sites. But also hacking sitescharging stations and television broadcasts for communicate to the Russian people that the battle is against the government, not against them.
In the last few hours the group has again attacked sites and servers near Moscow, so let’s take stock of the situation on the successful attacks. With the warning to the reader that due to the Russian propaganda covering the attacks received and the anonymity of online hackers, verifying the sources is in many cases difficult when not impossible. We report information from the group’s official Twitter accounts and reputable information sources but there is the possibility of some distortion. We would like to tell you this out of intellectual honesty.
Anonymous against Putin, the cyber war against the Kremlin continues
Anonymous is a collective of hackers starting to form in 2008, without a strong central identity but rather a large number of individuals acting sometimes in an almost independent way. So it can happen that some of the hacker attacks described these days are from other hacker groups.
And as the cybersecurity lawyer explains Stefano Mele to Formiche.net, there is the possibility that in the claims of Anonymous “the operations of some states have been hidden, which have found it very convenient in certain historical periods to hide their identity behind the now famous Guy Fawkes mask.”
However, the advance of cyber war continua. With the purpose of “keep Russia’s IT systems busy and on the defensive. So they can’t do anything in Ukraine or the West. Getting information is also an important point, ”as a member of the collective tells The Independent.
But there is also the anti-propaganda component, which wants to speak directly and without the filter of censorship to the Russian people. Which has protest Putin’s choices, with over 6,600 arrests in the first days of conflict. Because, as the group writes on Twitter: “No. Anonymous is not at war with Russia. We are at war against Putin. The Russian people do not support Putin’s war of aggression against the Ukrainian people ”.
New attacks by Anonymous against Putin
In the past 24 hours, Anonymous has reported having stolen data from the Russian Ministry of Economic Development, by publishing your data online. The amount of information seems massive, several online users have started looking for useful information to attack the Putin government and oligarchs close to the Kremlin.
The collective also reports that the group of Hacker NB65affiliated to Anonymousallegedly took the Russian space agency’s Control Center offline Roscosmos. Particularly significant news, because according to hacktivists this could block Russian spy satellites. Furthermore, in the first hours of the cyber conflict, the agency had been able to respond to a first attack by Anonymous, publishing that it had blocked the attack. This therefore seems like a revenge for the group.
It also appears that the hacker group has hacked the nuclear reactor, in addition to having had access to routes of Russian aircraft. However, these two attacks have not received any kind of confirmation, so we invite you to consider them only rumors for the moment.
In addition to direct attacks, the hacker group’s commitment continues to open channels with the Russian population to report information on the conflict, including losses of Moscow (which he does not officially declare). To do this they are using different methods, given the control of the government’s social networks. Including the publication of reviews on Google Maps for hotels in Moscow, as well as chats and channels in Telegram and other sources of information.
The attacks of recent days
Attacks successfully carried out are started on February 25, with several attacks on Russian institutions but also technically private companies, but under the influence of the Kremlin. Among the results reported in recent days are:
- February 25 Anonymous publishes the data of the Russian Ministry of Defense (some sources of information however report that those data may already have leaked online in the past)
- Anonymous hits and takes the Gazprom sitethe main supplier of Russian gas (which after the invasion is no longer sponsor of the Champions League)
- In Belarusthe site of the leading manufacturer of Tetraedr weapons ends offline. Services railway vanno ko
- The de sites go offlinel Ministry of Justice and Energy Russians
- They come online over 40 thousand documents in Russian del Russian Nuclear Safety Institute
- During the weekend, Anonymous is dark over 300 websites: Russian financial institutions, government agencies and media apparatuses
- Information from over 20 thousand current accounts of the Russian state bank SberBank they end up on the net
- Blocked the site bestchange.rupreventing you from converting rubles into cryptocurrencies
- The group allegedly blocked several Russian media outlets, including TASS, rbc.ru, kommersant.ru, fontanka.ru e iz.ru. In the first two, we read a message addressed to the population, which we report:
“Dear citizens. We invite you to stop this madness, do not send your children and husbands to certain death. Putin is forcing us to lie and putting us in danger. We are isolated from the whole world, they stopped buying our oil and gas. In a few years we will live like North Korea. Per spend? Why does Putin want to enter the history books? It’s not our war, let’s stop it ”.
- The electrek website reports the tampering of some charging stations for electric cars in Russia. The display reads insults to Putin, such as Putin Xujlo, which we could translate as “Putin the head of c *** o”. Others showed the writing “Glory to Ukraine”
- The navigation of the yatch of the Russian president ‘Graceful’ gets hacked. On the tracking site the name changes to report insults to Putin, the destination of his next trip reads: ‘HELL‘, inferno
- the Russian TV they show Russian folk songs (this information has not received independent confirmation) and messages to the population about the true human cost of the conflict
- Anonymous ha posted the frequencies of Russian military short-range radios, thinking that the Ukrainian population and army can send messages to the troops inviting them to desertion.
The war of Anonymous against Putin is constantly developing, we will keep you informed.