Anonymous takes .ru government websites offline | Hacker News Reader

Anonymous takes .ru government websites offline

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205 pointsmaxekman76 comments

I'm not very familiar with who Anonymous is and what they did in the past. But can't any hacker group just do this and claim they're Anonymous?

Yes that's the idea.

I wonder - does it really benefit individuals to identify themselves with Anonymous? Do successful attacks carry more weight when identified w the group? And if caught, does it come with harsher penalties, less harsh, or the same?

Why would an individual identity themselves as being part of a group called Anonymous? That's not the point.

Then what's the point of an "Anonymous" Twitter account?

It's a benefit only in terms of publicity. In the same way if someone killed someone with a knife and left a "Jack the Ripper was here" note would get a lot more sensationalistic press than no note.

Anonymous was a household brand name during Obama as they were exposing a lot of what he was doing behind the scenes, like drone strikes on innocent civilians and illegally targeting Americans overseas without due process. It was in the news constantly with their videos at a time when most people still watched TV.

It's (guerrilla) force projection.

You never know whether Anonymous is one angry teenager or an entire nation-state, so it behooves you to not piss "them" off.

They could, but by declaring that they are responsible they would, by definition, no longer be anonymous. (ha ha?)

I believe that is the purpose.

that is exactly what anonymous is

Yes

They are actually asking hackers everywhere to attack government sites in the name of Anonymous. Source: Their twitter

I don't understand how a social media account is supposed to work with an anonymous group. Do multiple people have access? Everyone?

Would be amusing if they had a blue checkmark.

One of the previous owner certainly does, namely Dell Cameron, who wanted to turn Anonymous into some sort of news organization[0], hence the name. He's a journalist who wrote for the Daily Dot, mostly about anything relating to Anonymous and WikiLeaks, but oddly enough also affiliated with people like Sabu (the founder of Lulzsec and FBI informant who set up all the hackers from the times of the Stratfor leaks, like Jeremy Hammond, who ended in prison).

I don't know who the current owner is but it's certainly not to be trusted by any hacktivist.

Edit: Another owner of the YourAnonNews account was Dan Stuckey, a Vice journalist, who was the one affiliating with Sabu[1]. Him and Dell operated the account for a long time, maybe they still do.

[0] https://www.gawker.com/anonymous-tries-to-found-a-legit-news... [1] https://thecryptosphere.com/2015/03/15/fuck-anonymous-im-at-...

If one is to do it, better to tell no one and let a poser take responsibility.

All of the individuals of the pre-2011 leftist hacktivist collective known as Anonymous are in prison.

If you're a fan of the Wichowski Siblings then you may recall the quote "You cannot kill an idea" from V for Vendetta (and also the silly mask). They use this to demonstrate and inspire the power of cellular, decentralized activism.

> pre-2011 leftist hacktivist collective known as Anonymous are in prison

I'm confused by this, are you referring to Lulzsec specifically? I've never heard Anonymous framed as leftist, and I'm certain that not everyone involved in pre-2011 hacktivism, such as Project Chanology[0], are in prison.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Chanology

I believe they're referring to LulzSec. IIRC, they created a "ddos app" called orbital cannon something-or-other that was designed to take down paypal and visa for limiting payments to wikileaks. Interesting times.

During Project Chanology people on 4chan distributed the LoiC DDos software, which led to many kids without any opsec to commit a federal criminal offense under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), and allegedly many of them had unpleasant visits by law enforcement.

But OP is probably confusing these shenanigans with Lulzsec, an supposed anonymous hacker collective but really FBI-led operation ran by their informant Sabu, who supplied hacktivists with targets to hack and later jail them (for example Jeremy Hammond who was sentenced to 10 years in prison because of this).

"information wants to be free" goes back even further

I'm the real A. Nonymous! It says so on my driver's license, credit card and passport!

Bah, no you're not; you just hacked that.

yes they can, and im pretty sure current anonymous have absolutely nothing to do with the old ones

Or a government/intelligence agency

That is the point and also why for the past damned near 2 decades I've been banging my head against the wall every time there is a news article about Anonymous that frames it as some singular group.

https://mil.ru/ is returning a 418 ("I'm a teapot")

People on /r/sysadmin checked it and it's to the outside of Russia only.

Yeah, you can use a Russian web-based proxy and see it:

http://vkrosse2.ru/proxy/browse.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fmil.ru%2...

It's been that way for quite some time.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30475651

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29594249

Judging by this unverified video, TV channels were playing Ukrainian songs: https://t.me/uniannet/32413

The people in the video are complaining about it:

– It’s all of them [channels]?

– Yep

– Damn

Off topic question: Has anyone managed to hack into any aircraft or tanks yet? I vaguely recall some US tanks were using Microsoft Windows and also vaguely recall that the RU borrowed some US battle tech. Did the RU also borrow some US fighter tech? Not suggesting harming anyone but forcing the landing gear locked deployed and flaps to 100% should be entertaining if feasible? Make tanks dance to a tik-tok video? Tik-tok on every HUD?

You want me to hack... the planet?

I’d imagine it’d be incredibly unlikely that critical software systems in jets or tanks would be internet-connected.

From past experience with military-spec software development, it’s usually highly redundant and isolated. The operating systems are often real-time Linux-based ones (at least the ones I was exposed to).

If there’s Windows running there somewhere, it’s unlikely it’s in a critical system.

it’s unlikely it’s in a critical system

I used to think that as well but I recall a time when a bunch of US tanks were blue-screening and that in effect disabled navigation or something to that effect. Maybe I can find those old articles. But you are probably right. If it were possible someone probably would have done it by now.

https://www.wired.com/1998/07/sunk-by-windows-nt/

US drones were capable of having their camera remote accessed at one point. The Taliban did it in 2009. Never underestimate the power of human hubris and laziness.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/dec/17/skygrabber-ame...

https://edition.cnn.com/2009/US/12/17/drone.video.hacked/ind... - Looks like it happened in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Damn.

Military units generally should be self-contained except for the (mostly) proprietary protocols used for sensors and communications. A tank isn't going to have an active directory client or printer sharing installed.

The thought of a tank having a printer and printer sharing service installed is honestly kind of funny to think about. Thank you for the laugh with all this going on.

I remember some UK navy ships that used to run Windows 2000 (still do?):

https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/no-our-new-aircraft-carriers...

but I believe it is completely isolated/air gapped.

I wonder if this was really "Anonymous" (with regards to who runs the Twitter page) or a collective effort with non-affiliated individuals. Ukraine has listed websites they asked "friends of Ukraine" to try DDos including such that have been down [1]. Anonymous (again, those who run the Twitter page) seemingly lied [2] earlier about a Ministry of Defense leak which they swiftly took down the tweet of [3].

[1] : https://t.me/itarmyofukraine2022/5

[2] : https://mobile.twitter.com/hexdefined/status/149732755266667...

[3] : https://web.archive.org/web/20220225193536/https://twitter.c...

military websites are of negligible strategic value. It’s like saying “Anonymous captures crates of russian military recruitment pamphlets”.

Can anoyone currently in the Russian IP space confirm the effects of this?

Kremlin.ru opens for me, but at a very low speed. Mvd.ru redirects to мвд.рф just fine. Taking down .рф TLD sounds like the next step.

For what it's worth https://rosneft.com is down for me, I wanted to fw to a friend a press-release from December 2021 (or that's what the Google SERPs show me as the date) where Rosneft the company was celebrating BP (the British energy company) increasing its shares in Rosneft to more than 20% or such.

Other than some internet street cred in a show of solidarity, what's the point? It's not like Putin is going to decide to stop invading and pull back because some governmental website was taken offline.

It's not like they have disrupted in field command and control, communications, etc of the attacking forces. It's not like they've shud down the power to the offices of those in charge, or taken over Putin's personal bank accounts, or anything useful at all.

Do the people of Ukraine benefit at all from this? Does this show NATO leaders that they have no backbone?

It's a shot across the bow, propaganda, and reconnaissance all in one. If they find soft targets, anonymous will attack them, and it makes Russia look bad.

Again, what's the point of making Russia look bad? Do you think that having a down gov't website makes them look any more "bad" than attacking another country with their military?

All this is doing is causing some Russian IT group of people to do extra work. These IT people may not even be supporting Putin's decision.

Counter argument: why not? Why allow any Russian to feel comfortable while this is happening? Why not inflict as much inconvenience as possible on Russian state apparatus?

Many Russians are complicit. They are not entitled to comfort nor stability while their leadership commit atrocities. Revolution could take down Putin from within if he overextends his resources - unlikely, but possible, and that possibility increases if regular Russians start to feel antagonistic to Putin and the consequences of his actions.

I can definitely appreciate that sentiment, but this level of "attack" is just a Tuesday for Western businesses from attacks from Russian operatives.

It wouldn't be a far stretch for Putin to declare these actual attacks on Russia since they are not private business but gov't networks. If they trace these attacks back to NATO countries, it could then be used as casus belli

Given that a non-trivial percentage of Russian failure modes involve nuclear Armageddon, I don't think we'll see much cyber war on Russian infrastructure beyond the vandalism and petty mischief.

Anonymous hackers probably don't want to start ww3, and there are likely embedded agents keeping an eye on participants to prevent overreach. It's ironic to think that Russian infrastructure is being actively protected by western intelligence to carefully manage the pressures and escalation. Or maybe optimistic...

I think it's established fact that power, water, gas, and communications are fragile and subject to disruption at a moments notice more or less worldwide. Rigorous projections show 90%+ casualty rate in dense urban regions if power gets shut down during winter months. Even without nukes or bullets, cyber war could kill billions.

I mean most of us are, at best, sitting around and watching the news. At least they're doing something even if it's not very effective.

Doing something just to not feel like you are not doing anything is not an appropriate approach. Especially when it comes to things like that, one's own actions should be considered carefully before joining the fray.

For the record, I am not advocating one way or another, but I just want to point that 'just doing something' may be counter-productive.

> Does this show NATO leaders that they have no backbone?

I don't see how Anonymous is concerned with NATO at all.

> What's the point?

Someone in Russia will have to deal with it, probably intelligent, technically skilled people which would be more useful elsewhere. It causes Russia to loose face. If any critical services run through this then to might impact ground operation (although the Russian army seems to use print outs a lot).

>Someone in Russia will have to deal with it,

Yeah? And? So? What? Western business IT personnel have to deal with this on a daily basis from Russian based operatives. It doesn't really mean too much, as they are staffed for this anyways.

I think it's all funny, but nothing serious. Any attempt to promote this as anything more than an annoyance to people that have no importantance to the actual matter at hand of a bully invading another sovereign country is just juvenile.

People in Russia will see less propaganda and hopefully will go on the streets. They are misinformed there and don't even know there are war in Ukraine.

> They are misinformed there and don't even know there are war in Ukraine

I think you are the one who is misinformed. We have internet, you know. Srsly, open Telegram, open VK, open 2ch.hk, open any other random forum in ru-net.

Where do people get weird ideas like that?

That’s what I wonder about. Is there a reason they aren’t pulling off Colonial Pipeline style attacks?

Except just leave the infrastructure locked permanently or at least until Russia withdraws.

This is what I was thinking about. However, I could easily see where Russian infrastructure was just never made "smart" to have these kinds of weaknesses.

It's not going to make Putin pull back but there's a catharsis to it. The Russian government have been trashing foreign IT infrastructure for decades and this does present an opportunity for those involved to give them a taste of their own medicine.

Why does that matter? For all we know, this could be work of a bored group of hackers who have nothing interesting to do on the day.

I tried opening government.ru and the page is still loading (been about 2-3 minutes for me)

Wow, it was fascinating to read some of the headline spins on the RT site.

how does someone go about doing this? yesterday news of RT.com being similarly hacked or being down. i mean sure you can do phishing and stuff but how do you do a lot of websites at once? ddos?

When people hear ddos they often think about pure force of traffic. In reality there are attacks like specifically requesting slow parts of a website, or long opening http connections (i.e. slowloris) that can do the trick with much less traffic.

This is like putting the Ukrainian flag on your Facebook profile picture - it does nothing in the real world. Ukrain nians humanitarian help and other tangible support, not this "oh, see, I've done something" pretend-a-care.

These types of internet attacks amount to nothing but advertising revenue for media companies, as mentioned by many commenters; however, they occur during war time which means they are considered a direct attack, just as if a rocket had been launched, which makes the offender state an enemy engaged in the war. Everyone must consider the risk factor of such attacks as retaliation is imminent and much more severe.

I am more than sure Putin’s army has been preparing for all scenarios for years.

> 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.

How does taking sites offline free people of censorship?

A critical element to censorship is what's placed in the vacuum after you do the censoring of free information.

Censorship is essentially never just the act of censoring, it's typically a larger program in action and almost always includes state propaganda filling the vacuum they create after they censor. They're taking down, or trying to take down, some of the fill-in propaganda that the Russians will otherwise be receiving domestically or that the state machinery will otherwise be pushing outward (eg via RT) for foreign audience consumption.

If you want to combat censorship, you'd also ideally want to target the propaganda delivery methods they're using to replace free information.

Stripping the situation back to vacuum would be better than just leaving the Russian state propaganda to fill in the vacuum. That'd be a win.

I get that there is value in censoring propaganda. It is still censorship. I am not convinced that the best action to counter propaganda is to censor it.

(I realize I have a bias towards U.S. style free speech. Maybe censorship is best for other cultures. I am still unconvinced.)

With Russian hacking and ransomeware attacks running rampart I don’t understand why we are still peering them same goes for North Korea and China. I know, I know VPNs and shit but we still get an insane amount of knocks from Russia and China.

It would be wise to wait a beat before determining who your targets are. There is still yet much to be revealed.

It seems like this has been playing out for months, if not longer. I'm not sure what else there might be to wait for.

I recommend stopping the one killing people. Seems like a safe bet.

Putin is killing civilians en masse in Ukraine right now. I'm pretty sure the whole world over knows who the target is, at least the ones in business with democracy and justice systems.

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