The infamous hacker collective known as ‘Anonymous’ has declared cyberwar on the Russian Government following the invasion of Ukraine. The leaderless activist group has succeeded in taking down several government-run websites in a series of cyberattacks as part of Operation Russia or #OpRussia.

Announced on Friday, hackers identifying with the Anonymous group confirmed their cyber operations had taken down the websites of the Russian government, the Kremlin, the defence ministry, and RT News (formerly Russia Today).

RT confirmed the attack took place resulting in some websites slowing down and others being taken completely offline (ABC News, 2022). RT has been called out as being a “major propaganda outlet” for the Russian Government as its current coverage of the invasion has been intensely pro-Russian, reportedly showing ‘cheerful celebrations’ at newly captured territories. UK MPs have stated the media outlet should be banned, describing the channel as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “personal propaganda tool”. DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attacks implemented by Anonymous flooded RT.com with overwhelming traffic taking it offline.

Operation Russia continues today with the collective taking down 9 government and military websites just hours ago this morning as confirmed on Twitter account @YourAnonNews.

Other hacktivist groups have joined the cause with one Belarusian group infiltrating the networks of the state-owned Belarusian Railway, presumably to impact Russian troop movements. The hackers successfully encrypted the majority of the servers and were able to destroy data stored on a backup server.

Cyber attacks for good?

It is rare to hear of a cyber attack or hacker collective working for good. Of course, as this is political, your perspective of ‘good’ depends on which side you are on. In the unsteady times we currently find ourselves in, the rise of the ‘hacktivist’ is overt. Using cyber-based techniques, hacktivism is exactly what it sounds like – hacking and cyber attacks in order to promote change and disrupt political agendas.

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