The hacker collective Anonymous continues its offensive against the Kremlinafter the invasion ofUkraine by Russia. The group continues to attack sensitive Moscow targets, responding to cyber attacks operated by the Russian military and targeting important infrastructure. In the last few hours they are several targets hithere are the most striking.
Anonymous against Russia, the targets hit by hackers increase
In recent years, Russia has repeatedly demonstrated that it can use information technology to attack sensitive targets abroad. And with the beginning of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, in addition to the violence in the streets, there have also been cyber warfare attacks. Russia immediately targeted Ukrainian government institutions and banks, deleting data and carrying out DDoS attacks to block institutional sites. Added to these attacks are attempts to block access to reliable sources of information and the diffusion Of fake news e propaganda.
The collective Anonymous therefore decided to declare a cyber war on the Russian governmentannouncing on Twitter the Russian targets hit by the hackers who form the group.
The first results
The Anonymous offensive then began to hit the first targets. Already on February 25, the hacktivist group announced that it had penetrated the website dand the Russian Ministry of Defense, publishing personal data of various generals and employees of the ministry. An operation of doxingwhich is getting a lot of online support.
In the following hours, the hacker group would have taken the Gazprom site, the state-controlled Russian gas giant, one of the main gas importers in Europe and Italy (as well as sponsors of the Champions League, among other things). On the morning of February 26, Anonymous then leaked i projects of the largest arms manufacturer in Belarus, historical ally of the Kremlin. Which in the last few hours has seen a hacker attack also against the Rail systemwhose services have been taken offline “until Russian forces leave the territory of Belarus”.
At the same time, the website of the Ministry of Justice e of the Russian Energy, with Anonymous tweeting: “If this war is not won with weapons, it will be with cyber weapons. Democracy and freedom will destroy fascism and imperialism ”.
Not all attacks have been successful. The Russian space agency Roscosmos has in fact announced that it has been able to track down the attackers of a DDoS attack.
Anonymous against Russia: nuclear documents
Anonymous’s Twitter account also announced today that it has coordinated the ‘retrieval’ of 2 gigabytes of data from the Russian Nuclear Safety Institutefor over 40 thousand documents stolen at the Russian institute. The hackivist group does not know what information is in the stolen documentsi, written in Russian. But he asked his followers to analyze them in case there was any interesting news. And certainly the allied nations in Kyiv are analyzing those documents for information.
“Network Battallion 65 gave the Moscow Nuclear Safety Instititute a little fun. We do not have the knowledge to translate all these documents, which are written in the Russian language. But let us know if you find anything interesting ”they write on Twitter.
Lots of blacked-out sites
In the past 48 hours, the hacktivist group has claimed to have blacked out over 300 websites. These include the web pages of various Russian government agencies, banking institutions, technically private companies but actually close to the Kremlin sphere. They even have interrupted several Russian television broadcasts to broadcast Ukrainian folk songs.
Vladimir Putin
In the last few hours they have claimed the theft of data from 20,000 current accounts of the Russian state bank SberBank. In addition, a DDoS attack took the site out of use bestchange.ru, blocking those who were converting Russian rubles into cryptocurrencies.
Also under the #OpRussia by Anonymous hackers have blocked the Russian news agency TASSon whose website a direct message to points appeared before it was taken offline.
Anonymous against Russia, the challenge continues
In the last few hours the attacks have been far too many to take into account, although i retweet di Anonymous can give an idea of the type of offensive. Some attacks are personally directed at Vladimir Putin, such as manipulation of the data of his Super Yacht ‘Graceful’, who pretended he had crashed into a bogus ‘Ukrainian Snake Island’, only to mark in the navigation data that he was headed to Hell. An operation useless for strategic purposes but which could affect the ego of the Russian president.
Others are more direct, like having took the government website offlineor Russian with DDoS attacks. But also having intercepted and disseminated some military communicationsi of the Moscow army. Or having aired on Russian TV snippets of what was really going on, instead of the propaganda of the national media.
Russian state TV channels have been hacked and are broadcasting the reality of what is happening in #Ukraine.
— Anonymous (@YourAnonOne) February 26, 2022
In all likelihood, these operations that hackers define as cyber warfare will continue in the next few hours. Some are meant to have a impact on the Russian and Belarusian populationsa, which in these hours have repeatedly shown that they are against the Kremlin and this war, with thousands of arrests after the protests. But it seems that most of the effort goes into‘directly attack the hierarchs and the apparatuses Russian government.
We will keep you informed on the outcome of this cyber battle initiated by Anonymous. Which we hope to help shift the balance in favor of the Ukrainian people, to whom all our solidarity goes.