CNN: Anti-Kremlin hackers took revenge on Putin for killing Alexei Navalny

Just hours after Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny died in a Siberian prison in February, a group of anti-Kremlin hackers put their revenge plan into action. They managed, among other things, to obtain information on hundreds of thousands of inmates and their relatives and to change the prices of food sold by online stores of Russian prisons, according to data obtained by CNN.

The hackers posted the message “Long live Alexei Navalny!” on the website associated with Russian prisons, where they also uploaded a picture of Alexei and his wife, Iulia, during a demonstration. They managed to infiltrate a computer network used by the Russian prison system and access a database containing information on 800,000 prisoners and their relatives.

The hackers, who say they include people from various countries, including Russian and Ukrainian émigrés, shared the information they obtained, such as phone numbers and email addresses of detainees and their relatives, “in the hope that someone will be able to contact them and help understand what happened to Navalny,” according to one of the hackers.

In addition, the hackers changed the prices of food that inmates’ relatives can buy for them, such as pasta and corned beef, to 1 ruble (1 cent) — these items normally cost more than $1 (100 cents) .

It took several hours for the online store administrator to realize that Russians could buy food at very low prices and three days for IT to fix the problem.

CNN has discovered that several inmates’ information, obtained by hackers, matches people who are now in various prisons in Russia.

On the day the hackers hacked the site and posted Navalny’s picture, the site’s administrators announced on the Russian social network VK that they were experiencing “technical problems” that caused “prices of food and other basic products” to be ” incorrectly reflected”.

Hackers sent messages to the administrators of Russia’s online prison store, warning them not to delete pro-Navalni messages from the site. When they refused, the hackers retaliated by destroying one of the servers used by the administrators.

Politically motivated hacking activities (“hacktivism”) have become more frequent since Russia started the war in Ukraine. In the days leading up to the invasion, a Ukrainian man retaliated by publishing internal data of a group of Russian criminals who were blackmailing their victims by infecting their computers with viruses. The published data showed that the group had links with the Russian intelligence services.

Many other hackers have joined anti-Kremlin activists in claiming attacks, including on an Internet service provider and websites that broadcast a major speech by Putin last year.

The war in Ukraine has taken “hacktivism” to an unprecedented level, according to Tom Hegel, a cyber security expert. Hacking activism “has become a powerful tool through which various groups express their perspectives, support their nations, attack their adversaries, and try to influence the direction of a war.”

“We IT specialists left Russia today. We love our country and will return when it is freed from under Putin’s regime. And we will go all the way down this path,” was the message posted by hackers on one of the sites attacked on February 18.

Editor: Raul Nețoiu

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