Hacktivists up the ante in ‘cyberwar’ against Russia

The group supposedly stole 820 gigabytes of emails and attachments, with some as new as March 5^th and shared them publicly on Substack under the title ‘Distributed Email of Secrets.’ This action was taken pre-emptively, on a hunch that Russia may cut its internet access nationwide by Friday.

Prior to this, Anonymous had been DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacking 1,500 Russian websites – funnelling so much user traffic that servers are overwhelmed and taken offline – and even hijacking state media television channels to display pro-Ukraine images.

Just earlier today, the CALL TO ACTIVISM Twitter account said that Anonymous had sent out over 7 million anti-war texts to Russian citizens exposing the truth about Putin’s invasion.

BREAKING: The hacking collective Anonymous has sent 7,000,000 anti-war texts to Russian cell phone users to tell them the truth about Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

— CALL TO ACTIVISM (@CalltoActivism) March 14, 2022

While we can ratify some of the reports with evidence on social media and internet forums, predictably, clout chasing is still going on.

In one instance, an Anon Twitter account claimed to have fried the central control system for Russia’s satellites. This was instantly debunked by cybersecurity firm Check Point who found that old footage had been reused from YouTube.

When it comes to the more coordinated efforts of Ukraine’s IT Army, this collective has predominantly focused on hindering the flow of Russian finances. So far, DDoS attacks have been carried out on targets from gas, oil, and even the Moscow Stock Exchange – which it managed to suspend for an entire day last week.

Bear in mind that while this is happening, western sanctions continue to batter the market value of the ruble anyway. Over the weekend, internet traffic company Cloudflare reported a ‘marked increase’ in DDoS attacks stemming from Ukraine and the official Kremlin website went offline too.

As it stands, activism is only warming up on the digital front and you can bet efforts will go up a notch should further censorship measures be taken by Putin.

It’s certainly encouraging to see people improvising to fight acts of tyranny. In the scramble to make a difference, however, there will be collateral damage down the line. Many are starting to question: just how safe is our data?