Anonymous continues to circumvent the Kremlin’s propaganda by sending anti-propaganda messages to the Russian population. And in the last few hours he did it by printing over 100 thousand copies of a document with Russian printers. But also by inserting messages in the open source code of some applications used in Russia. So much so that the bank Sberbank advised to do not install software updates.
Anonymous sends anti-propaganda messages to Russia, from printers to software
Since the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine, Anonymous has declared war on the Kremlin and tried every useful way to circumvent Russian censorship. Communicate to the Russian population the atrocities that the invasion of Ukraine is producing becomes essential for both Russia itself to oppose Putin’s military action.
Among the many hits made by Anonymous, in the first weeks of the conflict we reported that the hackers of the collective had had access to the printers of military centers in Russia. In fact they had printed information about the conflict and asked the Russian military to rebel against Moscow.
This time the group (for voice of one of the associated accounts) that “We are printing anti-propaganda and instructions for theinstalling Tor to printers across Russia in the past two hours. More than 100,000 copies have been printed so far. 15 people are working on it as we speak ”.
The text is a PDF in Cyrillic which would reach a few hundred printers in Russia. The text also contains instructions for installing the broswer tor, in order to circumvent the censorship operated by the Kremlin.
The Russian Bank’s warning: “Don’t download that software!”
In addition to the printed pages, the software also helps to communicate the high number of Russian soldiers who died in these months of conflict and the too many civilian victims in Ukraine. These are what some experts have renamed “protestware“, Malware in the code of software open source which then displays information about the conflict.
So much so that the bank Sberbank he announces to a Russian news site: “Cases of provocative multimedia content being introduced into software distributed for free have become more frequent. The use of such software can lead to malware infection ”.
If there is a need to install new software or download urgent updates, Sber warns you to pass all files being screened by the antivirus. And for those who have the skills, di analyze the code in search of the lines that spread anti-propaganda messages from Anonymous and other hacker activist groups.
The specific reference could come from an update containing a library in JavaScript, used between 7 and 8 March in Russia and Belarus. According to reports on GitHub by the hackers themselves, it overwrote some operational files on computers and government networks. And it showed the message “war is not the solutionno matter how wrong it is ”.
Anonymous’s cyber war continues, not just with anti-propaganda messages
These are just two of the ways Anonymous is using egr communicate their messages anti–propaganda in Russia. Come on social media to webcams and even TVs, up to reviews on Google Maps in the early days of the conflict, there are many strategies.
But if in these cases the goal is to invite rebellion, the approach is different towards big companies and tycoons close to Putin. Yesterday Anonymous had warned the Russian companies still operating in the country that after 48 hours they too would become targets of hacker attacks. In fact, so far the hacker collective has mainly hit government sites and companies with government shares.
Furthermore, after an article published on the assets of the main Russian oligarchs in the worldmultiple Anonymous accounts retweeted the news warning that strikes would soon also come to the wealth of rich Russians outside the borders.
The cyber war is getting hotter, with several shots every day. Which we always invite to take with skepticism: if the journalistic sources (as for the communication of Sber) are checked, the tweets of the hackers are more difficult to verify. We will keep you informed of upcoming attacks.