The Anonymous is a leaderless hacker group, notorious for hacking many government websites around the world
Working in a coordinated manner, usually toward a loosely self-agreed goal and primarily focused on entertainment, the group has associated itself with collaborative hacktivism on a number of issues internationally.
And this time, Anonymous has managed to hack into Roskomnadzor, the Russian federal agency responsible for monitoring and censoring media.
Following the hack, the group released 363,994 files to the public to see.
Residing in 43,593 directories and worth more than 820GB, the Anonymous published them in two parts.
First, over 360,000 files from the Roskomnadzor network, totaling 526.9 GB. According to the timestamps, some of the files are as recent as March 5, 2022. Second, there are two directories that contain raw data files, totaling 290.6GB.
JUST IN: #Anonymous has successfully breached and leaked the database of Roskomnadzor, the Russian federal executive agency responsible for monitoring, controlling and censoring #Russian mass media, releasing to the public over 360K files. #OpRussia https://t.co/m5wvoDGNPh
— Anonymous TV (@YourAnonTV) March 10, 2022
In the announcement, the Anonymous said that:
"Roskomnadzor's activities are always a matter of public interest to the people of Russia and to the world."
According to the leaked data, the Anonymous said that Roskomnadzor has given instructions about what can be said. Officials have also ordered local media outlets to delete information that call Russia's invasion of Ukraine an invasion.
In response to Facebook's fact-checking Russia's statements about the war, Roskomnadzor has also began restricting access to Facebook before later blocking it.
Roskomnadzor has also threatened to block access to Russian Wikipedia over their article about the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The Anonymous hacker who managed to hack Roskomnadzor, felt that people in Russia should know this.
They should know what their government is doing.
The source also expressed their opposition to the Russian people being cut off from independent media and the outside world.
"We are publishing this release in anticipation of Russia potentially being cut off from the global internet on March 11, and hope Russians will have time to download this data, before then."
Read: Russia-Ukraine War On The Internet: Between Cyberattacks To Censorship, Encrypted Messages And More
The Anonymous stressed that Russia is censoring the narrative regarding its role in its war with Ukraine.
Through the directives, the Russian government is trying to only allow information it sees appropriate to pass, and filter the rest.
In Russia, the internet is known to be controlled by the authorities, and its officials have the power to control the flow of information when it comes to the internet.
And in times like this war, the government is increasing its effort to further curb the spread of information its officials think unnecessary.
Russia is trying to put guardrails around information that reaches its citizens, in order to prevent anything from happening locally, while it's government focuses on its issues with Ukraine and most of the world.
It's worth noting that the Anonymous has waged its own war against Russia since February 24 when the invasion began.
Before hacking Roskomnadzor, the Anonymous has claimed responsible for hacking multiple Russian government websites. The group has also created a dedicated website, where users could send emails to random Russians whose email addresses were stored in the database, and encouraged users to "spread the truth about war in Ukraine."
Further reading: Ukraine Asks Underground Hackers For Help In Its War Against Russia
