Anonymous Hacktivists Breach Russian Databases, Leak 'Massive' Amounts of Data

"The Anonymous declaration of cyberwar was a top news story despite no evidence," writes cybersecurity specialist Jeremiah Fowler (an American who worked in Kyiv for the last 10 years — until fleeing in February to Poland). To investigate, Fowler performed a random sampling of 100 exposed Russian databases — and discovered that 92 of them had indeed been compromised. "Anti-Russian hackers used a similar script to the infamous 'MeowBot' that changed the name of folders and deleted the contents of the files. " (For example, renaming the folders to "putin_stop_this_war".)

According to CNBC, Anonymous claims to have hacked over 2,500 Russian and Belarusian websites. He said it will take years to review the amount of data that was leaked. Fowler said that the biggest development would be the huge amount of records taken and uploaded. Shmuel Gihon is a researcher at the threat intelligence company Cyberint. He said that they don't know what to do with all the information they have. Fowler and Gihon agreed that the more immediate outcome of the hacks is that Russia's cybersecurity defenses are weak.

According to Fowler's report, Anonymous has changed the rules of how a cyberwar is conducted, with the group also offering penetration testing to Ukraine. Fowler writes that the information campaign aimed at Russian citizens was part of a larger operation that spread far beyond the Russian government.

Some examples: Hacking Printers — Russian censorship has blocked many inside the country from knowing the true scale of the war and Russian losses. Anonymous hacked printers across Russia and printed uncensored facts or anti-propaganda and pro-ukrainian messages. The group claims to have printed over 100,000 documents. This also includes barcode printers at grocery stores where prices were changed and product names were changed to anti-war or pro-Ukrainian slogans....

Most people on the planet have received some form of email, phone, or text message. These try to get people to give them money. This same technology has been used to inform citizens of news and messages they are not allowed to read in Russia. The squad303 claimed to have sent over 100 million messages.