Tag: hackers

Anonymous hackers tell companies still operating in Russia to ‘pull out – or you’re next’ after Kremlin websites were hit by cyberattacks in retaliation for Ukraine war

International hacking collective Anonymous has warned Western companies who are continuing to operate in Russia to pull out or risk facing cyberattacks in light of the invasion of Ukraine.

Anonymous is responsible for several attacks of Russian state-controlled media and government websites in which it forcibly swapped Kremlin-directed programming for videos of the bloodshed on the ground in Ukraine and anti-war statements.

The collective has also conducted cyber raids on the likes of Russia’s media regulator Roskomnadzor and Russian intelligence and security service FSB, leaking thousands of classified documents to expose the details of Putin’s plans to conquer Ukraine and undermine the Kremlin’s domestic propaganda drive.

But now, the hacktivists are turning their attention to large corporations who have not yet suspended their operations in Russia amid the war.

Anonymous’ official Twitter account posted yesterday that companies had 48 hours to ‘pull out’ of Russia or face becoming a target of further attacks.

The same account declared on Thursday that its #OpRussia cyber campaign was ‘launching unprecedented attacks’ on Russian government websites and would double the capacity of its attacks.

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Russian News Websites Hacked Purportedly by Anonymous Amid Ukraine Invasion

Several Russian state-controlled or state-aligned websites appeared to have been hacked early Monday.

The websites for the major Russian state-owned news agency, TASS, the Russian nationally distributed newspaper, Kommersant, and the daily broadsheet newspaper, Izvestia, which was founded in St. Petersburg during the Russian Revolution and was one of principal media outlets in the Soviet Union, all displayed a message signed purportedly by the notorious hacking collective Anonymous.

“Dear citizens. we call on you to stop this madness,” the message began.  “don’t send your sons and husbands to sure death. Putin is making us lie and puts us in danger.  We have been isolated from the world, no one is buying our oil & gas. In a few year’s time we’ll be living like in North Korea.  Why do we need this? For Putin to make it to history books? This is not our war, let’s stop it!”

It continued, “This message will be deleted and some of us will be fired and maybe put to jail. But we can’t tolerate this anymore. Russian journalists who care. Anonymous.”

The message comes several days after Anonymous, an international hacking collective that has carried out cyberattacks against governments and corporations, appeared to declare war against Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

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Russian news websites hacked purportedly by Anonymous amid Ukraine invasion

Several Russian state-controlled or state-aligned websites appeared to have been hacked early Monday. 

The websites for the major Russian state-owned news agency, TASS, the Russian nationally distributed newspaper, Kommersant, and the daily broadsheet newspaper, Izvestia, which was founded in St. Petersburg during the Russian Revolution and was one of principal media outlets in the Soviet Union, all displayed a message signed purportedly by the notorious hacking collective Anonymous. 

“Dear citizens. we call on you to stop this madness,” the message began.  “don’t send your sons and husbands to sure death. Putin is making us lie and puts us in danger.  We have been isolated from the world, no one is buying our oil & gas. In a few year’s time we’ll be living like in North Korea.  Why do we need this? For Putin to make it to history books? This is not our war, let’s stop it!”

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Google Maps Location Data of Freedom Convoy Donors Posted Online

Precise Google Maps locations of people in Ontario, Canada who donated to the Freedom Convoy was posted online as a result of the GiveSendGo hack that was incited by the media.

Following the legacy media-led demonization of the Canadian truckers and their supporters, the names of 90,000 people who donated to the cause were leaked.

Now a Google Maps link was posted, “pointing to locations of donors throughout the Canadian province, with each pin listing their names, donor ID, email address, and the amount they donated, including those as low as $10,” reports Breitbart.

After being public for hours, Google finally terminated the link, which has now been replaced with a message that states, “This map is no longer available due to a violation of our Terms of Service and/or policies.”

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Famous ‘cyberterrorist’ goes on TikTok to take credit for GiveSendGo hack

A self-described “cyberterrorist” who rose to infamy as a member of the hacktivist group Anonymous is taking credit for the recent breach of GiveSendGo that released the names of donors to the Canadian trucker convoy.

In a video posted to his TikTok account, Aubrey Cottle claimed he hacked the fundraising website that the “Freedom Convoy” truckers used to raise money for their protests.

“Yes, I tossed the trucker. I hacked GiveSendGo, and I’d do it again. I’d do it a hundred times. I did it. I did it. Come at me. What are you going to do to me?” Cottle, also known as “Kirtaner,” said in the video. “I’m literally a famous f***ing cyberterrorist, and you think that you can scare me?”

Cottle previously posted a TikTok video on Feb. 7 saying, “It would be a real shame if something were to happen to GiveSendGo.” On Sunday, GiveSendGo was hacked, and over 92,000 names of donors on the platform were leaked online. The hack also redirected the GiveSendGo.com visitors to a new webpage featuring an essay criticizing the platform posted over a video of Disney’s Frozen.

“The Canadian government has informed you that the money you a-holes raise to fund an insurrection is frozen,” the essay said. “You are committed to funding anything that keeps the raging fire of misinformation going until it burns the world’s collective democracies down.”

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Hackers Just Leaked the Names of 92,000 ‘Freedom Convoy’ Donors

The Christian crowdfunding site that helped raise $8.7 million for the anti-vax “freedom convoy” in Canada was hacked on Sunday night, and the names and personal details of over 92,000 donors were leaked online.

The database of 92,845 donors is no longer available on the site, but VICE News was able to review a copy of the data.

While some of the donors did not provide their names—such as the person behind the current top donation of $215,000—the vast majority did provide them, including American software billionaire Thomas Siebel, who donated $90,000 to the “freedom convoy.”

While GiveSendGo does allow donors to make their donations public, many chose to use their company’s name or omit their names entirely, so the leaked database contains a lot of information that was never meant to be shared, data like donors’ full names, email addresses, and location.

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South Korea: Hackers Steal ‘Naked Photos’ from over 700 Smart Home Devices, Sell for Bitcoin

An unknown party recently hacked at least 700 smart home devices across South Korea and sold explicit images and videos accessed through the devices on the dark web, South Korea’s National Police confirmed Monday when announcing a criminal investigation into the incident.

“After receiving a call from the Korea Internet & Security Agency and starting an inspection, it seems that there were about 700 shootings [recordings],” Nam Gu-Jun, the chief of South Korea’s National Investigation Headquarters — which is a branch of South Korea’s National Police Agency — told reporters on November 29.

“The police have requested the removal of the video from the website where it was posted,” Nam said, as quoted by South Korea’s Kukmin Ilbo newspaper.

“However, since it is a website with a server in a foreign country and a privately operated website, it is unclear whether the request for deletion will be accepted,” the official acknowledged.

“For this reason, the police are also discussing ways to prevent exposure on the domestic Internet with relevant domestic agencies,” he revealed.

The South Korean tech news website IT Chosun exclusively reported on November 15 that hundreds of smart home devices in apartments across Seoul, South Korea’s national capital, and on the southern Korean island of Jeju were recently hacked. Some of the video footage filmed during the hacking was later sold for “‘0.1 BTC” on the dark web. BTC stands for Bitcoin, a type of cryptocurrency. A sum of 0.1 BTC equals about 8 million South Korean won, or roughly USD $6,717.

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Hackers Compromise FBI Email System, Spams at Least 100,000 Recipients

Hackers compromised an external email system of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Spamhaus Project, a watchdog group tracking spam and similar cyber threats, announced Saturday.

“We have been made aware of “scary” emails sent in the last few hours that purport to come from the FBI/DHS [Department of Homeland Security],” announced the group on Twitter.

The messages came from a legitimate email address—eims@ic.fbi.gov—from the Law Enforcement Enterprise Portal (LEEP), which is owned by the FBI/DHS, the group said. It added, however, “our research shows that these emails *are* fake.”

The FBI, part of the Department of Justice, said in a statement that it and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) are both “aware of the incident this morning involving fake emails from an @ic.fbi.gov email account.”

The agency added that although the impacted hardware was “taken offline quickly upon discovery of the issue,” the situation is an ongoing one and it will not be providing additional information for now.

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Company That Routes Billions of Text Messages Quietly Says It Was Hacked

A company that is a critical part of the global telecommunications infrastructure used by AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon and several others around the world such as Vodafone and China Mobile, quietly disclosed that hackers were inside its systems for years, impacting more than 200 of its clients and potentially millions of cellphone users worldwide. 

The company, Syniverse, revealed in a filing dated September 27 with the U.S. Security and Exchange Commission that an unknown “individual or organization gained unauthorized access to databases within its network on several occasions, and that login information allowing access to or from its Electronic Data Transfer (EDT) environment was compromised for approximately 235 of its customers.”

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Scraped data of 1.5 BILLION Facebook users offered for sale on the dark web – reports

Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp are all down, but CEO Mark Zuckerberg has another headache: The personal data of 1.5 billion customers, scraped from his platform, is reportedly being offered for sale on the dark web.

User IDs, real names, email addresses, phone numbers, and locations are among the data of more than 1.5 billion Facebook customers that’s up for sale, according to a report on the cybersecurity news outlet Privacy Affairs on Monday. The going price has been quoted as $5,000 for a million names.

The data “appears to be authentic” and was obtained through “scraping” – getting the information that users set to ‘public’ or allow quizzes or other questionable apps or pages to access.

It’s the “biggest and most significant Facebook data dump to date,” according to the publication – about three times greater than the April leak of 533 million phone numbers. Facebook said at the time this was “old data” and the security vulnerability responsible had been patched back in 2019.

Privacy Affairs reported that one purported buyer was quoted the price of $5,000 for a million entries. Another user claimed they had paid the seller but had received nothing, and the seller had not yet responded. The samples of data provided to the unnamed “popular hacking-related forum” appeared to be real, the outlet said.

Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram, all owned by Zuckerberg’s social media behemoth, were struck by a serious global outage that began on Monday. However, the data dump doesn’t appear to be related to the outage itself.

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