Anonymous declares cyberwar against Russia
The Anonymous hacker collective launched a cyberwar against Russia as Putin’s forces closed in on Ukraine’s capital Kyiv.
The Anonymous hacker collective launched a cyberwar against Russia as Putin’s forces closed in on Ukraine’s capital Kyiv.
According to Reuters, requests for volunteers began to appear on hacker forums on Thursday morning, as many residents fled the capital Kyiv.
On Thursday evening, the Anonymous hacker collective started pooling its resources to help support Ukraine against the Russian aggression.
“The Anonymous collective is officially in cyberwar against the Russian government. #Anonymous #Ukraine,” the group tweeted.
On Thursday, Reuters reported that the websites of the Russian president, government, and State Duma lower house of parliament were intermittently unavailable for users in Russia and Kazakhstan.
Anonymous has claimed responsibility for taking down the website of the ‘Russian propaganda station RT News’ and some other news channels.
On Friday evening, Anonymous claimed responsibility for successfully breaching and leaking the database of the Russian Ministry of Defence.
NBC News suggested that the US President was presented with options to carry out cyberattacks against Russia. The White House denied the report, saying it is ‘wildly off base.’
Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened countries that may be ‘tempted to intervene,’ and Ukraine’s allies are now on high alert of possible cyber attacks.
The Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) called for Australian organizations to assess their preparedness to respond to any cyber security incidents that may arise from attacks against Ukraine.
“Organisations should also assess their preparedness to respond to any cyber security incidents, and should review incident response and business continuity plans.”
Recently, Ukrainian government websites suffered a DDoS attack. Websites of the Ukrainian parliament, Council of Ministers, and Ministry of Foreign Affairs were not responding.
Earlier this week, several European Union countries sent teams of cybersecurity experts to Ukraine to help deal with cyber threats.EU officials fear that attacks targeted at Ukraine can put Eastern EU and NATO members in the Baltic states at risk of cyberattacks.
According to Chester Wisniewski, a principal research scientist at Sophos, organizations in countries surrounding Ukraine should be prepared to be drawn into any online mischief, even if they are not operating directly inside Ukraine.
“From a global perspective, we should expect a range of “patriotic” freelancers in Russia, by which I mean ransomware criminals, phish writers and botnet operators, to lash out with even more fervor than normal at targets perceived to be against the Motherland,” Wisniewski said in a blog post.