They had announced it on Twitter – their main communication platform – last Friday 25 February, not even 24 hours after the entry of Russian tanks into Ukraine, while the first bombings were underway: that of Putin’s Russia will be (also) a «cyberwarfare». «Anonymous – read the tweet on their account followed by over 7 million people – is currently involved in operations against the Russian Federation. Our operations target the Russian government. It is inevitable that the private sector will also suffer a lot ”.
The reason, according to the most famous and combative hacker collective in the world, is simple, and they explain it themselves: «Put yourself in the shoes of the Ukrainians who are being bombed right now. Together we can change the world, we can resist anything. It is time for the Russian people to unite and say no to Vladimir Putin’s war. We are Anonymous. We are a legion. Wait for us ». And the first action was to hit the website «of the Russian propaganda station” Russia Today “in response to the brutal invasion of Ukraine by the Kremlin». With the only goal, declared in front of the whole world, to overthrow Putin. “Isn’t it time to overthrow your aggressive government so we can all live in peace?” Wrote the hackers a few days ago on Twitter, using the eloquent hashtag #UpTheRebels.
This is why the collective turned to all the other computer pirates: “Hackers from all over the world: target Russia in the name of Anonymous: let them know that we do not forgive and we do not forget”. A few hours after the first cyber attack, Anonymous also took down the website of the Russian Defense Ministry and released the database containing phones, mail and the names of employees of the Ministry (which, however, Russia has always denied). It was then the turn of the Kremlin website: “We have sent government sites offline and turned information to Russian citizens so that they can be free from Putin’s censorship machine”, the Anonymous hackers had communicated, adding that they were working to “best guarantee the online connection of the Ukrainian people”. Saturday, then, was the turn of the Russian Space Agency’s online platform (roscosmos.ru) and the rzd.ru railway system.
On Sunday, then, a new hacker attack against a site of the Russian gas control network: the Russian Linux terminal in Nogir, in northern Ossetia. “We changed the data and raised the gas pressure so high that it almost caused a fire. But this was not the case for the quick action of a manager, ”they wrote on Twitter. Then they made about 300 websites of Russian companies, banks and state media unreachable, including those of the energy giants Gazprom, Lukoil and Rosneft and that of the Tass news agency. And above all the website of the Russian Ministry of Energy. “Tango down”, they tweeted, that is “Goal hit”.
The explanatory video
In a video lasting over three minutes, they clarified the reasons for the operation he will call “OpRussia”: as activists, he will not remain inactive while Russian forces continue to kill innocent people trying to defend their homeland. The message is also addressed to all Russian soldiers who are asked to lay down their arms and withdraw from Ukraine, as “Putin’s crimes must not be theirs too.” As a collective, Anonymous aims to help provide valid information to the Russian people about Putin’s “crazy” actions, also trying to help the people of Ukraine by providing assistance packages, trying to keep communication channels open and help obfuscate their communications from “prying eyes”. An action, that of Anonymous, which somehow wants to counter Russian censorship of social platforms: in recent days Putin had in fact announced that he had banned Facebook and then also Twitter.
War in Ukraine, Anonymous’s video threat to Putin: “You can’t win against us, we’ll hit your infrastructure”
Not just Russia
Cyber attacks are not limited to the nation led by Putin alone: even Belarus, an ally of Russia, has been suffering from hacker attacks by the collective for hours. The first was against the Belarusian railways stating that “all services are out of order” and will remain “deactivated until the Russian forces leave the territory of Belarus”, while the second took place against the country’s banks led by Aleksandr Lukashenko, very loyal of Putin.
The appeal of the Ukrainian government
On the other hand, on Saturday 25 February came the “call to digital weapons” of the Ukrainian minister for digital transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, who announced on Twitter that Ukraine itself is creating a “cyber army” to “continue the fight on cyber front »against Russia. In a tweet, Fedorov also included a link to a Telegram chat where hackers are encouraged to attack Russian energy and finance companies. The list includes gas giant Gazprom and banks like Sberbank and VTB.