Hacking group Anonymous declares ‘cyber war’ against Russia

• Anonymous tweeted to summon hackers worldwide

• The hacktivist group claimed they disabled Kremlin’s official website

The hacking group Anonymous on Tuesday claimed it has engaged in a cyber-warfare against the Russian government, President Vladimir Putin, and his allies.

“We, as activists, will not sit idle as Russian forces kill and murder innocent people trying to defend their homeland,” the supposed hacktivist group tweeted on Tuesday.

Along with the tweet, Anonymous posted a video claiming that after Putin invaded Ukraine, the group hit the nation’s “propaganda network Russia Today and took out many of Russia’s government sites.”

The tweets were posted from an account that is known to be affiliated with the Anonymous group  — with 7.4 million followers.

Despite the account’s large following, the person(s) behind Anonymous’s Twitter account denied that it is the group’s official account, and last Friday tweeted, “We are a decentralized resistance movement. There is no official #Anonymous account.”

Anonymous disrupting Russia’s cyberspace

The group tweeted to summon hackers worldwide to target Russia.

A post from February 24 stated that Anonymous, the loosely connected global group, was gearing up for action against the country.

Anonymous claimed responsibility for disabling websites belonging to the Russian oil giant Gazprom, the state-controlled Russian news agency RT, and numerous Russian and Belarusian government agencies, including the Kremlin’s official site.

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Subsequent posts took credit for disrupting Russian internet service providers, leaking documents and emails from the Belarusian weapons manufacturer Tetraedr, and shutting down a gas supply provided by the Russian telecommunications service Tvingo Telecom.

Last week, the group tweeted, “Anonymous has ongoing operations to keep .ru government website offline, and to push information to the Russian people so they can be free of Putin’s state censorship machine. We also have ongoing operations to keep the Ukrainian people online as best we can.”

“Russia may be using bombs to drop on innocent people, but Anonymous uses lasers to kill Russian government websites,” read a post on February 26.