Ukraine crisis: Global hacking group Anonymous declares ‘cyber war’ against Russia
The rogue group of hackers known as Anonymous has apparently waded into the Ukraine-Russia war as it declared a 'cyber war' against President Vladimir Putin and the Russian government.
Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, "Anonymous" on its Twitter account (with 7.4 million followers and roughly 190,000 Tweets) and Youtube (with 28,000 subscribers) called on hackers all around the world to attack Russia.
According to the group, it has already disabled sites including the state-controlled Russian news agency, the Kremlin’s official site, and Russian internet service providers.
“We, as activists, will not sit idle as Russian forces kill and murder innocent people trying to defend their homeland,” Anonymous said on Twitter.
Anonymous has famously launched attacks on almost everyone including Gene Simmons, Hustler magazine, Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
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Since it’s a decentralized group, the Twitter and YouTube channels aren’t “official” means for group communications. There are many others, but this Twitter account appears to have the biggest following.
On February 24, a tweet from the account indicated that the loosely connected worldwide network was preparing to take action against the country, and said "we will be retweeting their endeavours.”
In the days that followed, the account claimed credit for deactivating the websites of Russian energy giant Gazprom, state-controlled Russian news network RT, and a slew of Russian and Belarusian government agencies, including the Kremlin's official website.
Following tweets claimed responsibility for interrupting Russian internet service providers, releasing data and emails from Belarusian weapons manufacturer Tetraedr, and shutting down a gas supply provided by Russian telecommunications company Tvingo Telecom.
“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," the Twitter post said while summarizing the group’s intentions.
“Russia may be using bombs to drop on innocent people, but Anonymous uses lasers to kill Russian government websites," it said on February 26.
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-PTC News
