Anonymous news – live: Hacking attacks and cyber warfare could lead Russia to cut itself off from the internet

Vladimir Putin is getting ‘a sip of his own bitter medicine’, one German Anonymous group wrote

White House says Russian military intelligence behind cyber attacks on Ukraine

While Ukrainian forces fight against the Russian military's invasion, hackers from around the world caused disruption to Russia’s digital infrastructure.

Hacking groups such as Anonymous and the Cyber Partisans have claimed responsibility for cyberattacks on Russia’s banks, state broadcaster RT, and a Belarusian rail network reportedly used to move troops from Russia to Ukraine.

The “biggest Anonymous op ever seen” was claimed as Russian news channels like Russia 24, Channel One, and Moscow 24, including streaming sites, showed footage of Russia’s actions in Ukraine.

Peace talks between the two countries are ongoing between the two nations, but it remains unclear how long the bloodshed will last. Currently, these cyber groups have said that they stand with Ukraine against Russia’s powerful online forces - causing disruption to stop the country’s own attacks against Ukraine and the West.

Key points

• Anonymous hacks Russian state TV with Ukraine footage
• Russia may cut itself off from the global internet because of ‘continuous cyberattacks’
• Intel is out of Russia

[3 March 2022 09:19 · Adam Smith]

Anonymous struck by Russian hackers

A Russian hacking group known as Killnet has claimed it has disrupted Anonymous’ own websites.

The website ‘anonymoushackers.net’ was reportedly unusable, displaying instead a ‘500 Error. Internal Server Error.’ The website is now operational.

[3 March 2022 11:00 · Adam Smith]

Why haven’t the cyberattacks on Ukraine worked?

It was expected that Russia would have launched cyberattacks against Ukraine to cripple its infrastructure, but many report that attacks have not been as devastating as one would have expected.

However, Russia’s campaign seems more improvised - with internet and power grids still operational. That said, it is possible worse attacks could still come.

Alex Bornyakov, deputy minister of digital transformation for Ukraine, told TechCrunch that “you have no idea” the level of cyberattacks Ukraine has been facing.

“The connections are working. There are no electronics impacted yet. They hit one of the stations but it’s just one in a big city. There are a lot of others. But I think they will try to disrupt connections. They didn’t do this in the first place because I think they thought that this would be faster and easier, they would just run through the city, stop in the main square and just celebrate. That’s why they didn’t touch any infrastructure in the first place”, he said.

“But then the Russians realized they are not welcome here. They are occupying territory. So after like almost a week, they started to destroy our infrastructure, hit civilian objectives, kill civilian people.”

[3 March 2022 12:45 · Adam Smith]

Google Maps suspends reviews as Russian landmarks flooded with photos of captured soldiers and news clips

Google has blocked users leaving reviews on Maps for places in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus.

Tripadvisor has taken the same action on its own platform, as users were posting political statements to the ‘reviews’ sections of businesses and restaurants in those countries to try and communicate across borders in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The idea was spread by a Twitter account representing the hacking group Anonymous earlier this week, as well as Ukraine’s ‘IT Army’ – a group trying to counter Russian propaganda.

A review of the Zoological Museum of Moscow University stated “you have dead animals,” with pictures of captured Russian soldiers, while a monument to the Soviet film Officers is linked to dozens of photos of captive soldiers and screenshots of news clips, Motherboard reported.

[3 March 2022 18:00 · Adam Smith]

‘Trolling, hacking and ordering pizza’: Anonymous reveals how it plans to continue fight for Ukraine

Members of the hacking group Anonymous are planning a number of new attacks including breaching and leaking databases, defacing websites, and ordering pizzas.

Representatives for the hacking collective told The Independent that these tactics – alongside trolling, enlisting targets’ phone numbers to escort sites, and taking over data centres – are common tactics, but that “your guess is as good as ours” for what might happen next.

This is because Anonymous infamously does not have a leadership or organisational structure, with the group saying that they do not “gather on schedule, to discuss and vote” but rather “someone brings up an idea or a done hack or anything and if other Anons like it, they join a group around this. Or don’t.”

Read the full article here

[3 March 2022 20:00 · Adam Smith]

Ukraine cancels ‘crypto airdrop’ and will sell NFTs to support armed forces instead

Ukraine has cancelled a “crypto airdrop” and will sell NFTs to support its armed forces instead, a member of its government has announced.

The “airdrop” had prompted intrigue and confusion when it was announced by Mykhailo Fedorov, the country’s vice prime minister.

He has since announced that it would cancel the airdrop but continue to look at ways for people to raise money for Ukraine through the blockchain.

“After careful consideration we decided to cancel airdrop,” Mr Fedorov tweeted. “Every day there are more and more people willing to help Ukraine to fight back the aggression.

“Instead, we will announce NFTs to support Ukrainian Armed Forces soon. We DO NOT HAVE any plans to issue any fungible tokens.”

[3 March 2022 21:00 · Adam Smith]

The rise of hoax news: How a shameful new industry is profiting from war

The extremely online nature of modern warfare has spawned a cottage industry of scammers, fraud artists, and disinformation merchants trying to profit from crisis, Io Dodds writes

[3 March 2022 22:00 · Adam Smith]

Ukraine requests dogecoin donations as meme coin ‘exceeds Russian ruble’

Ukraine’s vice prime minister has requested dogecoin donations as part of fundraising efforts following Russia’s invasion of the eastern European country.

Mykhailo Fedorov, who also serves as Ukraine’s Minister of Digital Transformation, said the funds will “contribute to the Ukrainian victory as well as support civil people”.

The country has already raised more than $33 million worth of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies since launching a fundraiser over the weekend.

“Dogecoin exceeded Russian ruble in value,” Mr Fedorov tweeted on Wednesday.

[3 March 2022 23:59 · Adam Smith]

Russia could refuse to launch UK satellites, head of space agency suggests

Russia will refuse to conduct an upcoming UK satellite launch unless it can be assured they are not used for military purposes, the head of its space agency said.

Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, is contracted to conduct a launch on behalf of OneWeb, the satellite firm part owned by the British government. It is scheduled to happen from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Friday.

But if OneWeb is not able to give a guarantee that the satellites will not be used for military purposes by Friday evening, Russia’s rocket will no longer conduct the launch, according to Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin.

[4 March 2022 10:49 · Adam Smith]

Russia to remain on internet as authorities refuse Ukraine’s demand to disconnect the country

The Ukrainian government’s demand to have Russian domain names removed from the internet will not go ahead.

On Monday, Andrii Nabok and vice prime minister Mykhailo Fedorov, emailed the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and Réseaux IP Européens Network Coordination Centre (RIPE NCC) to “introduce strict sanctions against the Russian Federation in the field of DNS regulation”.

Their request, however, has been dismissed. “As you know, the Internet is a decentralized system. No one actor has the ability to control it or shut it down,” ICANN chief Göran Marby wrote in his response.

“Our mission does not extend to taking punitive actions, issuing sanctions, or restricting access against segments of the Internet — regardless of the provocations,” he added. “Essentially, ICANN has been built to ensure that the Internet works, not for its coordination role to be used to stop it from working.”

Read the full story here

[4 March 2022 11:52 · Adam Smith]

Anonymous claims 2,500 hacks

The hacking collective Anonymous has now claimed responsibility for 2,500 attacks on “Russian & Belarusian gov’t, state media outlets, banks, hospitals, airports [and] companies.

This number has risen by 1,000 since earlier this week - however, since anyone can be associated with Anonymous, this figure is difficult to verify.