Russian pipeline company Transneft hit by data leak dedicated to Hillary Clinton

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As the Russian invasion of Ukraine moves into its third week, unconventional actors continue to target Russian state-backed businesses with a string of hacks and data leaks, the latest apparently referencing pro-hacktivism comments made by Hillary Clinton.

Transneft is the Russian state-controlled oil company. The Omega Company, the research and development division of Transneft, was the subject of a leak on Thursday.

Transneft is the largest company in the world. Under the terms of sanctions against Russia, it is no longer able to receive investments from the US market.

The Omega Company is an in-house R&D unit that produces a range of high-tech acoustic and temperature monitoring systems.

The email leaks appear to contain the contents of multiple email accounts from company employees, including not only email messages but file attachments containing invoices and product shipment details and image files showing server racks and other equipment configurations.

The leaked data appeared online just days before some emails were time stamped.

The source of the leaks dedicated them to Hillary Clinton, according to a note from Distributed Denial of Secrets. In an interview with MSNBC in February, Clinton encouraged Anonymous to launch cyberattacks against Russia.

Clinton said that people who love freedom, and understand that our way of life depends on supporting those who believe in freedom as well, could be engaged in cyber support of those in the streets in Russia.

The Ukrainian government encourages hacktivism against Russian government targets, which is an uncommon position for a high-profile US politician to adopt. Clinton's statement might have been an echo of Donald Trump's call to Russian hackers to release her private emails if they had them.

Data leaks have emerged as a key tactic in hacktivists, but they have so far had little impact on the war. The conflict has largely failed to happen because the Russian military continues to destroy Ukrainian housing and infrastructure.