Russian Hacktivists Give Putin A New Headache

“Russian Cyber Command” has gone all Assange on Russian strongman Vladimir Putin by releasing a cache of defense-related documents:

A group of Russian hacktivists has taken a page from the playbook written by WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden, protesting aggressive political policies by releasing 1,000 documents allegedly stolen from the agency that oversees the export of Russian weapons to foreign countries.

The group, which calls itself the Russian Cyber Command, uploaded about 500MB of documents allegedly stolen from the servers of the Rosoboronexport State Corporation to protest “Putin’s Empire” and the “Russian Government[‘s] delusional attempts to start WWIII,” according to a March 6 story on SoftPedia.

The group posted a preview of the documents on Imgur and uploaded the files to BayFiles (caution: compressed .rar files, not scanned for malware), a hosting company and repository created by founders of The Pirate Bay, according to a statement from the group posted on its site CyberGuerrila.org.

The documents appear to be related to deals with companies, including Indian aerospace company Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd., complete with travel plans and details about the passports of Russian delegates, and digital images of the passports themselves, according to a March 6 story in CyberWarNews.info. The documents, compressed in a .rar file, are also thoroughly infected with an impressive list of Trojans, viruses and other malware, according to a VirusTotal scan run by CyberWarNews.

The group has been posting updates (in Russian) at its Twitter account @Rucyborg, which has attracted kudos and support from accounts associated with the more U.S./U.K-centered hacktivist group Anonymous.

In its statement, the group claimed to have cracked Rosoboronexport using malware embedded in an email sent to the CEO of Rosoboronexport from servers belonging to India’s embassy in Moscow, which it penetrated to give itself a safe-seeming origin point for the email that formed the point of its attack. The group, which referred to itself as “free computer renegades and outlaws from IT Security,” said the breach and release of the documents was part of an effort to “initiate a true domestic CyberWar on Russian Military Enterprises and eventually we shall deliver critical infrastructure companies on which Russian Putin’s Empire stands on.”

By: dave-dr-gonzo

David Hirsch, a.k.a. Dave "Doctor" Gonzo*, is a renegade record producer, video producer, writer, reformed corporate shill, and still-registered lobbyist for non-one-percenter performing artists and musicians. He lives in a heavily fortified compound in one of Manhattan's less trendy neighborhoods.

* Hirsch is the third person to use the pseudonym, a not-so-veiled tribute to journalist and author Hunter S. Thompson, with the permission of his predecessors Gene Gaudette of American Politics Journal (currently webmaster and chief bottlewasher at Liberaland) and Stephen Meese at Smashmouth Politics.