Major Russian media outlets hacked

Many Russian media outlets, including state-owned news agency TASS, were hacked. Pro-Ukrainian activists have replaced their websites with anti-war messages.

“Dear citizens. We urge you to stop this madness, do not send your sons and husbands to certain death. Putin makes us lie and puts us in danger. We were isolated from the whole world, they stopped buying oil and gas. In a few years, we will live like in North Korea. What is it for us? To put Putin in the textbooks? This is not our war, let’s stop it!” an anti-war message allegedly coming from ‘indifferent journalists of Russia’ reads.

The number - 5300 - stands for Russian soldiers who died on the Ukrainian soil since Russian invasion.

There’s a logo of Anonymous at the end of the message. The hacker collective has recently declared cyberwar against Russia, leaking sensitive information from the Russian Ministry of Defence and disrupting state-owned media websites and government sites.

This time, cyber activists have targeted TASS, Kommersant, Izvestia, Fontanka, and RBC offline. At the time of publication, many of them are already back online. However, Ukraine called on the hacker underground to help them fight Russian aggression in the cyber realm, and we can expect similar disruptions.

There are at least a dozen different groups of hackers and researchers, with Anonymous being the most prominent one, investing their effort and knowledge to help Ukraine.

Russian hackers also opened fire on the cyber front - Conti, CyberGhost, Sandworm, among others, are siding with Putin and trying to bring different Ukrainian organizations down.