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5 May 2022

Hacktivists Are Sharing Russian State Secrets With the World

Kyle Fendorf

The war in Ukraine has spurred a dramatic rise in hacktivism, or hacking by private individuals for a socially or politically motivated purpose, as groups mobilize to support their side in the conflict. Hacktivists have targeted Russian networks—in some cases coordinated by Ukrainian government officials through Telegram and other social media networks—and in other cases, they have acted without outside direction. Hackers have launched wiper attacks against Russian companies, which seek to overwrite critical data and thus render computers unusable, as well as distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, which aim to flood a network or website with so much traffic that it cannot function properly. Even ransomware gangs have gotten in on the action, with one group, NB65, using stolen Russian ransomware source code to encrypt data on Russian networks and demand payment for a decryption key. Ukraine has leveraged a groundswell of international support to create formidable offensive cyber capabilities virtually overnight.

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