Russia-Ukraine war: Anonymous hackers launch cyberwar against Russia taking down government websites

• The Anonymous hacker collective is pooling its resources to help support Ukraine against the Russians.
  
• Hackers took down several important Russian government websites, and RT.com, the state-controlled television network.
  
• Ukraine was earlier the victim of a massive hacking campaign that it alleged was from Russia.
  

The ongoing Russia Ukraine war has a new player – the Anonymous hacker collective. Amidst Russia’s offensive against Ukraine, Anonymous hackers have claimed to have taken down several Russian government websites, and RT.com, the website of the state-controlled television network.

The hacker collective made an announcement on Twitter yesterday, stating that they’re engaged in a ‘cyber war’ against the Russian government.


Some of the websites that were either taken down by Anonymous or were slowed down include those of the Russian government, the Kremlin, Duma and the Ministry of Defence.

Apart from RT.com, the hacker collective also launched distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against websites of Russian internet service providers Com2Com, Relcom, Sovam Teleport and PTT-Teleport Moscow.

Various Anonymous accounts were found using the #OpRussia and #OpKremlin hashtags on Twitter, similar to the #OpISIS campaign that was launched earlier in an attempt to take down the terrorist organisation’s online propaganda attempts.

Most of these websites have now recovered.

Ukraine alleges Russia behind the massive cyberattack against the country

This comes after Ukraine claimed that Russia was behind the massive cyberattacks launched against its government websites and a few banks, too, among other information technology companies.

“The malware, which is designed to look like ransomware but lacking a ransom recovery mechanism, is intended to be destructive and designed to render targeted devices inoperable rather than to obtain a ransom,” Microsoft said in a blog post, describing the attack against Ukraine.

Cyberattacks are one of the vectors being employed in modern warfare, which can prove to be dangerous and has the potential to take down a country’s industrial infrastructure.

Indeed, one of the Anonymous accounts had threatened to do just this to Russia earlier this month.

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