(Photo : MAHMOUD ZAYYAT)
LEBANON-POLITICS-PROTEST-PANDEMIC
A Lebanese protester wearing an 'Anonymous" mask, speaks to soldiers during clashes with them in the southern Lebanese city of Sidon late on April 29, 2020, as anger over a spiralling economic crisis in the country re-energised a months-old anti-government movement in defiance of a coronavirus lockdown. - Clashes broke out between protesters and the Lebanese army , hours after the under-fire central bank chief blamed a lack of government reforms for a spiralling economic crisis that has sparked demonstrations. A plummeting currency and fast-rising prices have reignited protests that saw one man killed in the northern city of Tripoli after being struck by a bullet fired by a soldier in clashes earlier this week. (Photo by Mahmoud ZAYYAT / AFP)
Anonymous, a mysterious online organization, appears to be entering the Ukraine-Russia crisis by declaring cyberwar on Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Russian government.
Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, a tweet from "Anonymous" - a Twitter account with 7.4 million followers and roughly 190,000 Tweets - called for hackers all around the world to attack Russia. On Feb. 24, a tweet from the account indicated that the loosely linked worldwide network was preparing to take action against the country, and that "we will be retweeting their attempts."
Global Hacking Group Launches "Cyber War" Against Russia
In the days that followed, the account claimed credit for deactivating the websites of Russian energy giant Gazprom, state-controlled Russian news network RT, and a slew of Russian and Belarusian government organizations, including the Kremlin's official website.
Following tweets claimed responsibility for interrupting Russian internet service providers, releasing data and emails from Belarusian weapons firm Tetraedr, and cutting down a gas supply provided by Russian telecoms company Tvingo Telecom. Many of the websites that the organization claimed to have taken down are present - or were recent - disabled, according to a service that tracks server failures.
A post on RT published on February 28 indicated that Anonymous had shut down its website, as well as the Kremlin's, last Friday. The organization had also targeted other Russian and Belarusian media outlets on Monday, by replacing their main pages with the message, "Stop the war," as per CNBC.
Anonymous Takes Down Russia's State-Run News Services
Since the invasion of Ukraine began last week, hackers have been ratcheting up their efforts to destroy Russian infrastructure, with electric vehicle owners becoming the newest target in an increasingly sophisticated cyber-war.
Electric vehicle charging stations along Russia's M11 motorway, which runs from Moscow to Saint Petersburg, has been taken offline, according to a Facebook post by Russian energy company Rosseti, because the Ukrainian company that helped manufacture them allegedly hacked the control system to display anti-Putin messages.
According to the report, the Ukrainian firm that supplied the components left a backdoor in its systems, and by exploiting this backdoor, the company - dubbed AutoEnterprise by Rosseti - caused the charging stations to show an error message.
It's unclear how many electric car charging stations were hacked or disabled, or how long they'll be unavailable to EV drivers, but the Russian business claims the chargers are being separated from the rest of the grid network and will be operational again shortly.
After the invasion of Ukraine, the famed hacker group Anonymous publicly declared war on Russian infrastructure, the event is only one of numerous massive cyber strikes that have hit Russia in recent days, as per LAD Bible.
In what was expected to be the first round of tit-for-tat hacks, Russian government websites, including the official Kremlin and media regulator pages, went down over the weekend.
The Kyiv Independent reported on Saturday afternoon that Ukraine's telecommunications agency had also declared that Russian TV networks had been hacked to play Ukrainian music. It happened only hours before Russia's dictator started his aggressive "demilitarize and de-Nazify "Ukraine after Kyiv was attacked by a massive hack targeting its government and banks.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Internal Affairs, Security Service, and Cabinet of Ministers all had their websites down on Wednesday afternoon.
Several government buildings received bomb threats, which are assumed to be part of a psychological pressure operation by Moscow. Ukraine's Vice Prime Minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, stated on Saturday that the government was forming an "IT army" to "battle on the cyber front" in the face of tit-for-tat assaults.
According to intelligence sources, the Russian president's campaign is not proceeding as planned owing to Kremlin "overconfidence," inadequate tactical planning, and "shock" at the ferocious opposition put up by patriotic Ukrainians fighting for national survival.
The Ku Klux Klan and Islamic fanatics are two groups that Anonymous has previously attacked. "Anons" are members who wear Guy Fawkes masks. The group informed Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla, in July of last year that they planned to target him because he had too much control over the bitcoin markets, Daily Mail reported.
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