Russia has long been home to cybercriminals such as ransomware groups, which the country has
largely ignored as long as they don’t target companies in Russia. Simultaneously, Russian military hackers have stirred global chaos for years—
causing electricity blackouts in Ukraine,
hacking the Olympics, and
conducting the worst cyberattack in history. Evidence against
state-backed Russian hackers has been piling up since the start of the war, though Russia has consistently denied launching cyberattacks around the world. The Russian embassy in the United States did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In April, cybersecurity officials in the US, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the UK warned against the potential damage that pro-Russian groups,
including XakNet and Killnet, could cause. While it is not clear who is behind Killnet or whether the group is backed by the Russian state, one other notorious Russian hacktivist group has been linked to the Kremlin. At the end of June, US cybersecurity company Mandiant, as
first reported by Bloomberg, said Russian intelligence operatives had passed stolen information to XakNet. Ukrainian officials have also
pinned attacks on DTEK, the country’s largest private energy firm, on XakNet. (The group has posted about DTEK multiple times in its 36,000-subscriber Telegram channel.)
“We've seen a number of groups emerge in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine,” says Alden Wahlstrom, a senior analyst at Mandiant. “XakNet and Killnet both have questionable provenance.” Wahlstrom says any claims of hacktivism should be approached with “a healthy dose of skepticism” and that Russian intelligence agencies have an “established history of using cutout groups” for cyberactivities. Last week the Trickbot cybercriminal group—which is made up of multiple smaller groups like the
Conti ransomware group, and has
links to the Russian state—
was spotted by IBM targeting Ukraine for the first time. IBM describes the move as a “huge shift” in the group’s behavior.
solder going to Kherson can be accounted as dead. Publishing this order is likely a reaction on Putin's "we haven't started yet".
Se manuaali oli kyllä paras koskaan missään pelissä mukana tullut. Varmaan yhtä paljon viihdyin sen parissa kuin itse pelin.
” on its Telegram channel to 88,000 followers. The group then called on hacktivists—naming a number of other pro-Russian hacking groups—to attack Lithuanian websites. A list of targets was shared.
