The international hacking group named Anonymous was behind the outage of some Russian websites including the official website of the Kremlin and the Ministry of Defense since Friday, a report said.
Aside from the websites of the Kremlin and Ministry of Defense, Gosuslugi, the state's service portal went offline too last Saturday; including the Russian Ministry of Digital Development and Mass Media telling TASS that the site has facing cyberattacks on an "unprecedented scale," the Jerusalem Post reported.
In a tweet posted, "Anonymous has ongoing operations to keep .ru government websites offline, and to push information to the Russian people so they can be free of Putin's state censorship machine."
Up until to this day, the said portals remain inaccessible. Hence, Kremlin denied they were being attacked by Anonymous.
The hacker group declared a cyberwar specifically on Russian president Vladimir Putin. A Twitter account, @YourAnonOne, linked to Anonymous posted, "To the people of Russia: We do not want to fight with you. Understand that Putin has invaded a sovereign nation and the whole world is outraged. We know it's risky to stand up to him, but if you don't, then who will?"
This happened after the government of Ukraine called for volunteers in its cybercommunity to safeguard critical infrastructure and oversee cyber movements from Russian troops. Application via google docs spread out on hacker forums last Thursday said Jerusalem Post.
Written in a post by the co-founder of cybersecurity in Kyiv, Yegor Aushev, "Ukrainian cybercommunity! It's time to get involved in the cyber defense of our country," as he asked for hackers and cybersecurity experts, after the request of a senior Defense Ministry official.
Last Wednesday, cybersecurity firm ESET identified a new piece of destructive software hitting hundreds of computers across Ukraine. Ukrainian officials suspected Russia behind this intensifying wave of hacks against the country. However, Russia refused to comment said Washington Post.
Anonymous was a collective group of hackers that was internet-based and an international team spread all over the world. In an article written by Deccan Herald, the group originated with a 4chan raid in 2003 and went to target the Church of Scientology, Donald Trump, and the United Nations in the recent past.
According to an article posted by Mining Technology, it's difficult to attribute these attacks to Anonymous with absolute certainty. It would still be difficult to take down Russian strong cyber defense. Yet, Russia Today openly charged its site outage to Anonymous, saying attacks came from 100 million devices from the US.
Meanwhile, as the US was quick to sanction Russian leaders, concerns floated that Russia's Cyberattack may revert to other countries, especially to the US. In an analysis written by Tim Culpan and Parmy Olson of Bloomberg, they cited how cyberattacks could be more efficient rather than putting troops in the ground.
As they quoted, "Cyberwarfare could be an effective strategy deployed by national agencies. Rather than put troops on the ground, Washington, through its United States Cyber Command, could get to work trying to knock out power and gas operations and disrupting communications. Allied governments may choose to acknowledge such action, or deny any involvement."
