Hackers stoke pandemonium amid Russia’s war in Ukraine

The Russian Space Research Institute website was defaced by hackers on Thursday, who are accused of stealing files from the Russian space agency. Their message was "Leave Ukraine alone else Anonymous will f*ck you up even more." There is a surge of hacktivism in support of Ukraine.

Protests against Russia's war of choice with Ukraine have been held in 48 Russian cities. The global community has raised millions of dollars for Ukraine through donations of cryptocurrencies, and private companies such as Shell and Apple have pulled out of the Russian market. Hacktivists are joining the noise to make a statement and advance their cause.

For years, Russia has barraged Ukraine with an array of intrusive and destructive cyberattacks. And the war opened in recent days with Russian campaigns to hit Ukrainian institutions with DDoS attacks and awaken data-wiping malware on hundreds of Ukrainian computers. Ukraine itself has launched an effort to amass a volunteer “IT Army” of civilian hackers from around the world to aid its fight, alongside traditional conscription. Still, as the back-and-forth has escalated into violence in the region and NATO countries have battered Russia with crippling economic sanctions, hacktivist data leaks, website defacements, and cyberattacks have become one of the most visible, if not necessarily the most impactful, digital battlegrounds. Advertisement

Experts say the mix of hacktivism and active warfare creates a messy picture. Hacktivism could endanger intelligence operations. Some argue that periods of active combat render hacktivism ineffectual and distract.

Lukasz Olejnik, an independent cybersecurity researcher and former cyberwarfare adviser to the International Committee of the Red Cross, says that it is a high-intensity armed conflict between two states. Most of the reports of hacktivism are unreliable. They are amplified on social media and traditional electronic media, but what is the actual effect?

The hacktivist efforts are very visible. The hacking collective Anonymous claimed credit for attacks that briefly knocked out access to a number of sites, as Russia began its invasion of Ukraine. Putin's yacht was renamed after a marine tracking data defacement. There are two groups that leaked 200 gigabytes of emails from the Belarusian weapons.