Following its decision to declare war on Ukraine a few days ago, Russia has become the victim of an all-out cyberattack from Anonymous.
Popular online hacker consortium ‘Anonymous’ has joined in the fight against Russia for its recent invasion of Ukraine. A recent Twitter post from the group urged hackers across the globe to target Russia. Anonymous stated in its February 24th post that its group members “will be retweeting their endeavors” as they lay siege to Russia.
Anonymous Claims Responsibility for Cyberattacks on Russia
In fact, the hackers’ group has already claimed responsibility for several recent cyberattacks that incapacitated Russian government websites and state-backed news outlets. Among those affected are Russian oil giant Gazprom, and the state-controlled Russian news agency RT. In addition, several other Russian and Belarusian agencies reportedly fell victim to mass cyberattacks on Monday. Furthermore, Anonymous also claimed responsibility for disrupting Russian internet service providers, and leaking confidential information from Belarusian weapons manufacturer Tetraedr. In addition, the avenging hackers disabled a gas supply provided by Tvingo Telecom, a Russian telecoms service.
In a follow up tweet on February 26th, Anonymous said:
“Russia may be using bombs to drop on innocent people, but Anonymous uses lasers to kill Russian government websites.”
The mysterious group had also earlier posted a message on Twitter last week, which provided some insight into its capabilities. The message read:
“Anonymous has ongoing operations to keep .ru government website offline, and to push information to the Russian people so they can be free of Putin’s state censorship machine. We also have ongoing operations to keep the Ukrainian people online as best we can.”
According to CNBC, a recent website review that checks for server outages confirmed that numerous websites Anonymous claimed to have put out were indeed disabled. Furthermore, websites that were not totally snuffed out, instead saw their main pages replaced with the message “Stop the war.”
Anonymous Explains That It Is More Than Meets the Eye
Anonymous also pointed out the “decentralized” nature of its standing as a group, despite the centrality connoted by the given Twitter account. According to the hackers, “We are a decentralized resistance movement. There is no official #Anonymous account.”
This suggests that the featured Twitter account is part of several others that function under the auspices of Anonymous-affiliated social media accounts. However, it is extremely difficult to ascertain whether the group’s claims are valid or not. This is due to the apparent void provided by the anonymity the group operates under in the first place.
Russia Wages War on Ukraine
Russia invaded its Eastern European neighbor Ukraine on February 24th in a blatant act of war. Russian troops laid siege to several Ukrainian cities, including the capital Kyiv, a major manufacturing and transportation center. The Russian invaders used airstrikes from fighter jets and shelling from armored tanks to advance into Ukraine. Rendering countless Ukrainian casualties in their wake, the assailants eventually captured the Chernobyl nuclear power plant site and several other critical hotspots in the country.
Tolu is a cryptocurrency and blockchain enthusiast based in Lagos. He likes to demystify crypto stories to the bare basics so that anyone anywhere can understand without too much background knowledge.
When he’s not neck-deep in crypto stories, Tolu enjoys music, loves to sing and is an avid movie lover.
