The announcement of the hack came from Emma Best of DDoSecrets who confirmed that an affiliate of Anonymous collective shared 820 GB worth of Roskomnadzor with their organization.
The international hacktivists collective Anonymous has struck again and this time the group is claiming to have hacked Roskomnadzor (aka Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media), a major Russian federal agency. The group also claims to have stolen over 360,000 files.
We often read about Russia banning VPNs, Telegram or email services, etc. But did you know which agency actually bans these services? For your information, it is Roskomnadzor, a major federal executive agency responsible for controlling, assessing, and censoring Russian media.
Details of the Hack
As seen by Hackread.com, the total size of the leaked database is around 820 GB, and a majority of the files in the database belong to Roskomnadzor’s data concerning the Republic of Bashkortostan, one of Russia’s largest provinces.
The entire dataset is now available on the official website of Distributed Denial of Secrets (aka DDoSecrets), a non-profit whistleblower organization. It is however worth noting that originally an Anonymous affiliate shared Roskomnadzor’s data with DDoSecrets and the organization itself it not behind the hack.
Furthermore, the initial announcement of the data leak came from journalist and co-founder of DDoSecrets Emma Best on March 10th, 2022. On the other hand, @YourAnonNews, one of the prominent representatives of Anonymous collective, also tweeted about hack.
Why Roskomnadzor?
Anonymous has publically sided with Ukraine over the ongoing conflict with Russia. The Russian government has blocked all key sources of information, particularly news and media outlets, and Roskomnadzor was tasked to block Facebook, Twitter, and other online platforms.
While Twitter launched its Tor onion service, authorities in Russia have also amended the Criminal Code to arrest anyone who posts information that contradicts the government’s stance. Nevertheless, since Roskomnadzor is a major government agency responsible for implementing government orders Anonymous believes Russian public must have access to information about what is going on within Roskomnadzor.
Anonymous Cyberwar Against Russia
Anonymous waged a cyberwar against Russia on exactly the same day its troops invaded Ukraine. Anonymous earlier blocked Russian Defense Ministry’s website and published its employees’ data online.
On March 7th, the group hacked Russian state TV channels and Netflix-like video streaming services and aired pro-Ukrainian messages with footage of the Russian military’s shelling on Ukrainian civilians and residential areas.
Moreover, as Hackread.com reported yesterday, Anonymous also targeted and hacked misconfigured/exposed Cloud databases of Russian organizations. Tho shocking aspect of the attack was the fact that Anonymous and and its affiliate hackers hacked 90% of Russian Cloud databases and left anti-war and pro Ukrainian messages.
