Anonymous, a renowned international hacker group, has declared cyberwar against Vladimir Putin and Russia, with a video message on Sunday.
“Mr. Putin your invasion of Ukraine has shown that your regime has no respect for human rights or the self-determination of your neighbors,” the message says.
“You have shown that you are no better than the imperialist governments you criticize and the whole world can see through your propaganda.”
Anonymous warns Putin that he will face “unprecedented cyber-attacks from all corners of the world…Members of Anonymous have declared cyber war against your aggressive regime with numerous government websites taken offline in the past several days.”
The message continues to say that this is only the beginning. “Soon you will feel the full wrath of the world’s hackers.”
Message to Vladimir Putin by #Anonymous posted Sunday morning pic.twitter.com/qWINa01g9t
— Daphne Tolis (@daphnetoli) February 27, 2022
Russia’s websites went down on Friday, Saturday
Some Russian government websites, including the Kremlin and the Ministry of Defense, were down on Saturday, as the country’s invasion of Ukraine continues.
The exact reasons for the outages are not immediately clear, but the international hacking group Anonymous has claimed that it is attacking the sites.
“Anonymous has ongoing operations to keep .ru government websites offline, and to push information to the Russian people so they can be free of Putin’s state censorship machine,” the group said in a tweet.
On Friday, the same Russian websites appeared offline for a while, but Russia denied it was being attacked by Anonymous, according to state media. It’s the third day in a row Russian websites have been inaccessible, at least for some period of time.
Anonymous: freedom fighters or cyber terrorists?
Anonymous is a decentralized international activist- and hacktivist collective and movement primarily known for its various cyberattacks against several governments, government institutions and government agencies, corporations and the Church of Scientology.
Dozens of people have been arrested for involvement in Anonymous cyberattacks in countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, the Netherlands, Spain, India, Turkey and Greece.
Evaluations of the group’s actions and effectiveness vary widely. Supporters have called the group “freedom fighters” and digital Robin Hoods, while critics have described them as “a cyber lynch-mob” or “cyber terrorists”. In 2012, Time called Anonymous one of the “100 most influential people” in the world.
See all the latest news from Greece and the world at Greekreporter.com. Contact our newsroom to report an update or send your story, photos and videos. Follow GR on Google News and subscribe here to our daily email!
