Pierluigi Paganini
March 02, 2014
The tension between Russia and Ukraine also has repercussions in the cyberspace where Russia Today, Russian principal news channel website (RT.com) has been hacked and defaced by an unknown group of hackers.
The media agency confirmed the attack with a tweet from its official account:
“RT website has been hacked, we are working to resolve the problem,”
The hackers have replaced the words “Russia” and “Russians” with “Nazi” or “Nazis”, the defacement is visible in the following image.
The modification to the Russia Today website were visible for nearly 30 minutes, one of the changed headline stated:
“Nazi nationalist leader call on ‘most wanted'”
Who is behind the attack?
It is still unclear, recently the popular collective Anonymous invited its followers to join in the hacking operation dubbed #OpRussia in support of the Ukrainian protesters. Under the #OpRussia campaign the group of hacktivists has hacked hundreds of Russian websites.
The principal Russian media agency has been hacked by unknown attackers just after Putin’s order to move troops to Crimea was approved by the Parliament.
The attack on the pro-Kremlin news organization is successive to the approval for the use of military force in Ukraine’s Crimea by Russian parliament.
What to expect in the future … cyber experts have no doubts, it is the beginning of a silent cyber war between Russia and Ukraina, on one site hackers pro-Ukraine will intensify their activities while Russian cyber units will increase their offensives against Ukrainian opposites. I made a rapid tour on principal social media, I noted that on both side has started a misinformation campaign, on the one hand, Putin’s supporters are publishing disconcerting stories and images about atrocities committed by Ukrainian in Crimea, on the other side of Putin it is possible to read everything.
(Security Affairs – Russia Today, Information Warfare)
