Pierluigi Paganini
February 07, 2023
The collective Anonymous released last week 128 gigabytes of documents that were allegedly stolen from the Russian Internet Service Provider Convex. The huge trove of data was leased by an affiliate of Anonymous’s affiliate group called Caxxii.
The stolen documents contain evidence of a dragnet surveillance activity conducted by the intelligence service FSB.
The Russian government illegally monitors citizens and private organizations across Russia.
According to collecting, Convex company launched a project code-named ‘Green Atom’ that aims to spy on Russian citizens by using surveillance equipment. The warrantless surveillance of Russian citizens violates the country’s laws and their rights.
Such surveillance activities are classified as unauthorized wiretapping, espionage, and warrantless surveillance of civilians, which are against the country’s laws.
“‘Green Atom’ (TS ORM fsb) refers to the installation and maintenance of wide-ranging surveillance equipment that is used to monitor the online activity of all traffic in and out of Convex.” reads a statement sent by Caxxii to the Kyiv Post.” “This can be classified as espionage, unauthorized wiretapping, and surveillance of civilians without a warrant, which circumvents the laws of the Russian Federation and all public statements of the Russian authorities,”
“They are actively transmitting data to Moscow. It’s not just preemptive tapping,” continues the group.
According to the stolen data, Convex employees were conducting the activity in coordination with the Federal Security Service.
“Documents confirming the existence of this project, as well as the correspondence of Convex employees with the FSB, are now available not only to us, but also to you.” continues the group.
Exposed data put Russian organizations, whose data are included in the archive, at risk of hacking.
Stolen data were leaked through the leak site DDoSecrets.
“According to the hackers, the Green Atom data confirms the extent to which these legal structures are abused. They say the internet provider captured and mirrored virtually all data from every switch in the largest regions of Russia, which is then passed on to Moscow for use by the security services” states DDoSecrets.
Russia is known to conduct domestic surveillance using a surveillance system called SORM (Russian: Система оперативно-разыскных мероприятий, lit. ‘System for Operative Investigative Activities’).
The Russian Government obliges national ISPs to purchase and install the probes used by SORM system that allows the Federal Security Service (FSB) to monitor Internet traffic including online communications.
SORM is a mass surveillance system that allows the Government of Moscow to track the online activities of single individuals thanks to the support of the Russian ISPs.
Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon
(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Anonymous)
