Black army hackers. The most famous hackers and their attacks. Syrian Electronic Army
September 19 is International Pirate Day. The site decided today to tell its readers about the modern colleagues of filibusters - hackers.
To begin with, it is worth defining the meaning of this term. " Hack" - in English once meant a lot of concepts with the general meaning of "to abruptly break something off." There were other nuances. Then “hacking” became simple computer hooliganism.
A “hacker” is a hacker of websites and servers. A person who uses his skills for various, sometimes unseemly purposes. Now this is an industry for some, and a lifestyle for others. The latter prefer to call themselves not “hackers”, but “hackers”; this is a whole international community. They hack networks for fun and often “patch the holes” when they leave. “Clean” hackers not only do no harm, but also bring benefit by pointing out weaknesses in the system. And they often do it selflessly. Sometimes at the request of the network owner himself, who wants to know these weak points.
The most famous hacker attacks in Internet history
Kevin Mitnick and the Pentagon. This American is probably the most famous hacker in the world, largely due to the penchant for eccentric behavior that the idle public expected of him. During his arrest in 1995, Mitnik categorically stated that all he had to do was whistle into a public pay phone to start a nuclear war.
In reality, of course, he could not do anything like that, because, even though he really hacked many protected networks, he did not use any ingenious programs and supernatural codes for this, but banal methods of social engineering: in other words, the human factor. Mitnik used not so much any technical skills as knowledge of psychology and manipulated people, forcing them to give up their passwords.
Mitnik hacked the Pentagon on a computer with a processor less than 2 megahertz
Mitnik began practicing hacking various systems from childhood. It is known that at the age of 12 he found a way to forge bus tickets, which allowed him to travel around the city for free. He then hijacked the voice communications system at a local McAuto's to talk trash to customers.
At the age of sixteen, Mitnik hacked into the network of Digital Equipment Corporation and stole what was posted there. software: It cost him a year in prison and three years under police supervision. It was during this time that he hacked into Pacific Bell's voicemail system and, after a warrant was issued for his arrest, went on the run.
As a student, Mitnik entered the global network ARPANet, the predecessor of the Internet, and through a computer at Los Angeles University reached the servers of the US Department of Defense. The hack was recorded, the young cybercriminal was quickly found, and he ended up serving six months in a youth correctional center.Fun fact: he did this on a computer with a processor less than 2 megahertz.
In 1999, the FBI agents who caught Mitnik claimed that he had false documents and Cell phones with “cloned” numbers. He was eventually accused of hacking several computer and telephone networks and was sentenced to 46 months in prison, plus 22 months for violating the terms of his probation; Moreover, a joke about a nuclear war cost him eight months in solitary confinement.
Kevin Mitnick was released from prison in 2003 and has since written several books about his hacking achievements. In 2000, the film Track Down was released, based on his biography, written by Tsutomu Shimomura and John Markoff, with Shimomura being a computer systems expert whose computer was hacked by Mitnik. Today Mitnik is 49 years old and runs his own software company. computer security.
Jonathan James and NASA. American Jonathan James is the first juvenile hacker convicted in the United States of cybercrimes. According to the prosecution, at the age of 15 in 1999, he hacked into the computer system of his own school, the network of the telecommunications company Bell South, and then penetrated the server of the US Department of Defense. Here he intercepted more than three thousand emails from government employees, hacked into a NASA server and stole software designed to control life support systems on the International Space Station.
In 2000, James was arrested, however, due to his young age, he was found guilty of two counts in juvenile court and thereby avoided actual prison time. Instead, he spent six months under house arrest and sent written apologies to the Pentagon and NASA. If James had been two years older, he would have faced at least ten years in prison.
Jonathan James hacked NASA at age 15
Meanwhile, a few years later, Jonathan James began to be suspected of another computer crime: in 2007, the credit card information of millions of customers of the TJX retail chain was stolen, and the Secret Service searched James' home, trying to find evidence linking him to this crime.
Although charges were never brought, James was confident that he would go to prison, and (according to official version) committed suicide. In the note he left, he stated that he did not believe in the justice system and saw it as suicide the only way maintain control of the situation and avoid punishment for a crime he did not commit. In interviews James gave prior to the theft of TJX customer data, he stated his intention to open his own computer security firm. Instead, at the age of 24, he committed suicide.
Kevin Poulsen and radio station KIIS-FM. Another former hacker who, like Mitnik, changed his occupation to a more secure one. In the eighties, Poulsen specialized in hacking telephone lines and easily manipulated the numbers and channels of different operators. Poulsen first became known under the pseudonym Dark Dante in 1993 after hacking into the telephone control system of Los Angeles radio station KIIS-FM. As a result of skillful line blocking, he became the winner of several competitions and, as the 102nd caller, “won” a Porsche 944 S2.
Poulsen is currently a senior editor at Wired magazine.
Poulsen came to the attention of the FBI after a hack secret bases data containing information on wiretapping telephone conversations. In one of the documentary television programs Unsolved Mysteries, dedicated to unsolved crimes, his face flashed, but immediately after that, inexplicably, everything telephone lines NBC's channels were out of service, so no one could get through to identify Poulsen.
Nevertheless, the hunt announced by the FBI bore fruit: one of the supermarket employees recognized Poulsen and blocked him in the store aisle. Kevin was accused of hacking telephone networks and money laundering and was sentenced to five years in prison, after which he was prohibited from touching computers for three years.
After his release from prison in 1998, Poulsen turned to journalism and today serves as senior editor of the online version of the famous computer technology magazine Wired.
Sven Olaf Kamphius and Spamhaus Project. The Dutch-born owner of CyberBunker, which hosted the Pirate Bay, and a prominent figure in the German Pirate Party, was arrested by Spanish police in April 2013 after a series of powerful cyberattacks that some say threatened the entire Internet. The fact is that the already mentioned company CyberBunker and the company CB3ROB, also owned by Kamphius, were hosting not only torrent trackers, but also botnets, spammers and other suspicious enterprises.
Kamphius carried out an attack that threatened the entire Internet
The massive DDoS attack on Spamhaus Project servers came after the computer security firm blacklisted CyberBunker and CB3ROB. In response, Kamphuis announced the creation of the STOPhaus group, which, according to him, included hackers not only from the USA, Canada and Western Europe, but also from Russia, Ukraine and China. According to the prosecution, by multiplying requests through DNS resolvers of different providers, the STOPhaus group managed to flood the Spamhaus Project servers with requests at a speed of more than 300 Gbps, which significantly slowed down the entire Internet.
After his arrest, Kamphuis stated that he had nothing to do with this attack and that he only publicly represented the STOPhaus group, but did not participate in its activities. According to him, the damage from the attack on the Spamhaus Project has been greatly exaggerated. He calls himself an Internet activist and a fighter against censorship and all those who try to control the Internet.
Gary McKinnon and the US Department of Defense. This Scot is the most famous British hacker, whose extradition has been sought by the United States since the early 2000s, where he faces more than 70 years in prison. UK police first became interested in McKinnon in 2002, but thanks to public support and some other circumstances, he is still at large.
In the US, McKinnon is accused of hacking almost a hundred computers belonging to the Department of Defense and NASA in 2001. According to authorities, having gained access to the system, he deleted critical files and effectively paralyzed the US military network for an entire day. Moreover, MacKinnon allegedly erased US military data from hacked computers following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and stole some critical information. important information. According to the laws in force in Great Britain, he was only entitled to a six-month sentence for such offenses.
McKinnon himself claimed that he was looking in the computers of the US military for evidence of concealing information from the public about UFOs and other potentially useful technologies. In addition, he stated that he gained access to completely unprotected machines and left numerous records of all the vulnerabilities discovered on those same computers.
A federal court in the US state of Virginia in November 2002 formally charged MacKinnon with seven counts of computer crime, and if the UK had extradited him to the US, the hacker could well have spent his entire life in prison. After the Extradition Act of 2003 came into force, it seemed that the hacker's fate was sealed, but that was not the case. The only thing that has changed is that he was required to report to the police station every day and not leave the house at night.
Sting, Boris Johnson, Stephen Fry spoke out in support of McKinnon
The defense insisted on medical examination of McKinnon, and he was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome (a form of autism) and clinical depression, which can provoke suicide. On this basis, McKinnon appealed to the European Court of Human Rights, which initially suspended the extradition, but then refused to block it. In 2009, the Supreme Court granted extradition, but public outcry over the case meant it never took place. Many famous personalities spoke out in support of the hacker - from musicians Sting and Peter Gabriel to London Mayor Boris Johnson and actor Stephen Fry.
In October 2012, Home Secretary Theresa May announced that MacKinnon's extradition would be blocked on the grounds that if extradited, the risk to the defendant's life was so great (he could commit suicide) that such a decision would be contrary to human rights. Subsequently, it was decided to abandon criminal prosecution of the hacker in the UK: formally, due to difficulties with evidence located in the United States. Now McKinnon is completely free.
Vladimir Leivn and Citibank. A Russian hacker who withdrew $12 million from the Citibank system in 1994. Most of the money was returned to its rightful owners, but $250 thousand was never found. An interesting fact is that at the time of the crime, in our country there were no articles in the criminal code providing for punishment for cybercrimes, so Levin was extradited to the United States and was in custody for 3 years.
Levin withdrew $12 million from the Citibank system in 1994
Vasily Gorshkov, Alexey Ivanov and Paypal. Russian hackers who were “active Internet users” in the 2000s. These Russian guys were able to hack payment system PayPal, Western Union and much more. In total, the guys hacked 40 American companies in 10 states. In 2003, Gorshkov was sentenced to imprisonment for a period of 3 years and a fine of $700 thousand. And Ivanov was caught and convicted in 2004, sentenced to 4 years in prison. The trial also took place in the United States.
The most famous hacker groups
Lizard Squad
The first mention in the media about Lizard Squad appeared after they hosted servers for the games League of Legends and Call of Duty. This was followed by more serious attacks on Sony Playstation Network and Microsoft Xbox Live. One gets the impression that representatives of this group have a personal dislike for Sony. In August 2014, they even posted a threat on Twitter to blow up a plane carrying the president of Sony Online Entertainment. Fortunately, the aircraft made an emergency landing and there were no casualties.
In addition, Lizard Squad claim ties to the Islamic State. For example, after the attack on Malaysia Airlines, hacktivists published on the company’s website the message “Hacked by Lizard Squad - the official Cyber Caliphate. ISIS will win." And a few months earlier, they placed ISIS flags on Sony servers. However, it is likely that the group’s activities are not politically motivated, and they only need to mention ISIS to attract the attention of the media.
Following the December attacks on PSN and Xbox Live, UK and US law enforcement conducted a major joint investigation which resulted in the arrest of a 22-year-old man from Twickenham and a teenager from Southport, both alleged members of the Lizard Squad.
Anonymous
Anonymous is perhaps the most famous hacker group of all time. This is a decentralized online community consisting of tens of thousands of hacktivists for whom computer attacks are a way of expressing protest against social and political phenomena. The group became famous after numerous attacks on government, religious and corporate websites. She attacked the Pentagon, threatened to destroy Facebook, destroy the Mexican drug cartel Los Zetas and declared war on Scientology.
In 2010, Anonymous organized a large-scale “Operation Payback” campaign, launching attacks on Visa, MasterCard and PayPal systems. The reason is their refusal to make payments to the WikiLeaks site, founded by Julian Assange. In 2011, hacktivists publicly supported the Occupy Wall Street movement against social and economic inequality by attacking the New York Stock Exchange website.
In 2010, Anonymous launched attacks on Visa, MasterCard and PayPal systems
Since 2009, dozens of people have been arrested for their involvement in Anonymous activities in the US, UK, Australia, the Netherlands, Spain and Turkey. Representatives of the group condemn such persecution and call their captured like-minded people martyrs. Hacktivist motto: “We are Anonymous. We are legion. We don't forgive. Wait for us".
LulzSec
LulzSec (abbreviation Lulz Security) is an organization that, “for fun,” carried out attacks on the servers of companies that were considered the most reliably protected. It initially consisted of seven members working under the motto “Laughing at your safety since 2011.” The date was not chosen by chance: in 2011, Anonymous, already famous at that time, carried out a major attack on the HBGary Federal company. Later, this incident topped the ranking of the most notorious cybercrimes according to Forbes magazine. The name of the hacker group is "Lulz" - a derivative of LOL (Laughing Out Loud).
LulzSec's first attacks include the theft of passwords for Fox.com, LinkedIn, and 73,000 X Factor contestants. In 2011, they compromised the accounts of users of the Sony Pictures resource and disabled the official website of the CIA.
After successful attacks, LulzSec traditionally left caustic messages on resources, as a result of which some experts tend to consider them more Internet pranksters than serious cyber warriors. However, the representatives of the group themselves stated that they were capable of more.
In June 2011, LulzSec issued a message announcing its dissolution. However, a month later, hackers launched a new attack - this time on the News Corporation newspaper. They hacked The Sun website and posted it on home page news of the death of its owner Rupert Murdoch.
The main participants of LulzSec were arrested in 2012. The FBI informant was the 28-year-old leader of the group, Hector Xavier Monsegur, who had the online name Sabu. In his speech, prosecutor Sandeep Patel noted that the hackers were not driven by political ideas like Anonymous, and called them “pirates of our day.”
Syrian Electronic Army
The goal of the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) hacker group is to support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The resources of political opposition groups, human rights organizations and Western news sites most often become targets of attackers.
The nature of the group's connection to the Syrian government remains unclear. On its website, SEA describes itself as "a group of young Syrian enthusiasts who cannot remain indifferent to the widespread misrepresentation of the Syrian uprising." Meanwhile, a number of experts claim that the organization operates under the control of the Syrian government.
Techniques used by SEA include traditional DDoS attacks, spamming, phishing, and virus distribution. They usually post political messages and the Syrian flag on the main page of the attacked site. The Independent, The Daily Telegraph, Evening Standard, The Daily Express, Forbes, Chicago Tribune, CBC, La Repubblica and some other publications have already become victims of Syrian computer scientists. Members of the Syrian Electronic Army also attacked the Facebook accounts of Barack Obama and Nicolas Sarkozy.
On October 13, it was announced that hackers had hacked the Twitter account of Hillary Clinton campaign chief John Podesta, calling on him to vote for Republican rival Donald Trump. Clinton's campaign has been attacked before. It is believed that Russian hackers were behind the hacking of computer systems this summer.
On June 27, 2016, a group of OurMine hackers hacked the account of the CEO of Google Inc. Sundar Pichai on Quora. It is also assumed that on September 13, it was Russian hackers who hacked computer systems World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). From the information received, the world learned that American athletes took doping with the permission of doctors. To date, the latest known attack is related to the hacking of the Russian Foreign Ministry website on October 23. The hacker who hacked the site wrote: “Quit it.”
There are a huge number of hackers who use their deep knowledge of computer systems for completely different purposes. For example, in 2014, hackers from the Lizard Squad attacked Microsoft and Sony, which prevented millions of players from playing their games online.
Other hackers steal databases of user account data, as happened in September 2014, when scammers stole the data of 500 million users from the Internet company Yahoo. Some hackers sit in their garages with laptops and steal data bank cards for the sake of making easy money, while others receive salaries and help employers protect themselves from other hackers.
One of the most famous hackers of our time, Edward Snowden, worked for the US National Security Agency and took part in a program to spy on millions of Americans. However, a sense of justice prevailed, and Snowden told the world about all the crimes of the NSA. Older hackers, tired of such a life, are engaged in consulting companies and ordinary people on computer security issues.
In 2010, it became known that alleged American or Israeli hackers launched a computer network Iranian nuclear power plants and uranium enrichment factories Staxnet virus. The virus sabotaged the operation of centrifuges that are used to enrich uranium ore so that it would later be possible to create fuel for nuclear power plants. Today, Iran is improving relations with the outside world and is going through the process of lifting economic sanctions. This is not least due to anonymous hackers on the government payroll. Your attention -top of the world's most active hacker groups.
Bureau 121
There is tragically little information about the North Korean hacker group Bureau 121. It is known that these people are part of the North Korean army and carry out tasks for the state related to theft and retrieval of information, as well as protecting the country's computer systems from foreign hackers. North Korean hackers also attack other countries, in particular South Korea. South Korean gaming services, websites of government agencies, leading companies, and banks are under attack.
It is assumed that specialists from Bureau 121 took part in attacks on the servers of the Japanese company Sony in November 2014.
The North Korean state is known to recruit young hackers at the North Korean University of Automation. The group consists of about 1,800 young people who operate around the world, including outside North Korea. The need to operate outside the country's borders is explained by North Korea's extremely weak information infrastructure.
Chaos Computer Club (CCC)
Chaos Computer Club is a very old hacker group. It was founded back in 1981 by German hackers. Today it is a very large network that unites mainly German-speaking hackers.
For the first time, the group consulted legal experts before their attacks to ensure their actions were legal.
This suggests that these people have their own specific code of conduct. Their legality strategy was partly what ensured the group's survival for such a long period of time. However, not everyone in this huge group acted entirely within the law, because the CCC is a largely disorganized group.CCC hackers became famous in the 1980s when they notified the Deutsche Bundespost (formerly the German postal company) that their computer systems were not secure enough, making them an easy target for early self-interested hackers. The Deutsche Bundespost provider arrogantly declared that everything was fine. CCC activists proved the ISP wrong when they stole DM 134,000 from postal accounts. The money was returned the day after the attack.
Morpho
Morpho or "Wild Neutron" is a well-funded group of high-profile hackers who have carried out contracts for pharmaceutical, investment and technology companies since 2011.
However, they are not a government group because their activities usually involve stealing insider information for money.
The structure of Morpho is very interesting. Morpho includes many small groups that use high-end software and technology. Their networks are dispersed, they use Bitcoin to pay their hosting provider, and they use many complex virtual machines.
Syrian Electronic Army
The Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) is a group of hackers that sympathizes with the Syrian government and is also associated with Iran and the terrorist group Hezbollah. Often their attacks are aimed at sabotaging Western media. SEA hackers also use their knowledge to search for rebels and opposition forces.
SEA specialists are very inventive. For example, with one tweet they sent from President Obama's Twitter account, they briefly brought down the Dow Jones index on the New York Stock Exchange.
Hackers wrote that President Barack Obama was injured in a bomb explosion at the White House. SEA also tweeted on behalf of the BBC account that Saudi weather stations were damaged by a collision with a camel. Computer security experts speculate that the SEA hackers may be from Iran, as they are well versed in colloquial English and humor. Probably all Iranians understand these issues, since experts make such conclusions.
Anonymous
Anonymous is the most famous group of hackers on the Internet. Mostly made up of Americans. The organization began on the 4chan forum in 2003 and has since grown into a fairly serious force on the Internet. As a universal symbol, they use the conventional image of the hero of English history, Guy Fawkes, which was generated by the fantasy of the creators of the comic book “V for Vendetta.” The structure of Anonymous is decentralized - the organization did not stop its work and attacks even when many participants were arrested. Many of Anonymous's actions were liberal or anti-state. Activists advocate for the abolition of government control of the Internet and censorship.
Anonymous's most famous actions are related to the fight against child pornography and the Church of Scientology.
Anonymous has no leader, it is a collective mind. This is due to the fact that one single person is the weak link in any system, and it is especially dangerous if this person gives in. Because of his ego, vanity and self-interest, many may suffer. Anonymous is first and foremost an idea. This idea has allowed this organization to exist for so long.
Tarkh Andishan
Tarkh Andishan is the Iranian government's response to the Staxnet virus attack. After this incident, the Iranian state realized the real danger of cyber threats. In this regard, it was decided to modernize the Iranian network shield. Modernization took two paths: a network fighting unit called Tah Andishan was created, as well as Ajax, which was formed from existing hacker activists in the country.The most famous action of the Ajax group was called “Operation Saffron,” in which hackers tried to gain access to sensitive American defense industry data through a phishing attack.
Tarkh Andishan, in the minds of ordinary people, are extremely dangerous terrorists, since they, like action movie heroes, have gained access to airport terminal gate control systems in South Korea, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
This attack allowed them to deceive airport security systems by replacing people's personal data. Tarkh Andishan hackers also hacked into industrial facilities of oil and gas companies and the telecommunications infrastructure of various organizations.
Dragonfly
Dragonfly is a state-sponsored group of hackers from Russia and Eastern Europe. Their main goals are Electricity of the net, energy industry, and command systems of European and US states. Dragonfly is designated as an always-active threat.Dragonfly activists introduced Trojans into legally distributed software for industrial systems management, which is very similar to the Staxnet virus. This malware can disrupt the operation of many industrial and infrastructure facilities, which makes the Dragonfly group an extremely dangerous enemy.
APT28/ Fancy Bear / Sofacy / Pawn storm / Sednit
A group of hackers that, according to experts, operate primarily from the Russian time zone at the behest of the Russian government. The goals of the organization are of interest to Russia, and when working, the hackers of this organization use very modern and high-quality methods, as the recent hack of WADA proved.At one time, hackers hacked the systems of NATO, the Polish government, various Georgian ministries and the computer systems of the OSCE. It is noteworthy that hackers are active in territories where the US Extradition Treaty does not apply.
Anonymous is an international group of hackers that has been hacking government websites for a long time.
Birth of a legend
Hackers from the Anonymous group are now known throughout the world. Not the hackers themselves, of course, but just their shares. But how did it all start, and what were their goals?
In its first phase of development, Anonymous saw its goal as simply freedom of the Internet and entertainment. They easily subjected the servers of copyright holders to DDoS attacks, carried out various humorous and not quite actions, but soon a bunch of amateurs grew to a decent size and turned into the international organization of hackers Anonymous, terrifying the governments of many countries. These cyber fighters easily hack the most secure sites, be it a CIA or Pentagon resource.
In fact, the hacker group Anonymous is so successful and not caught only because none of the group members has ever seen the other in person, and all communication takes place virtually. Their faces are always hidden behind Guy Fawkes masks from the movie “V for Vendetta.” In addition, Anonymous hackers are scattered all over the world from Great Britain to China, so there is no way to identify them. The police may arrest 2-3 people, but the organization will not suffer much damage.
Groups of anonymous hackers have formed in almost all developed countries of the world. And Russia is no exception. The group Anonymous Russia operates in the Russian Federation. Like every self-respecting organization, Anonymous also has its own Twitter account, where they inform people about the latest promotions and plans.
Anonymous and ISIS
Not long ago, Anonymous hackers declared war on (ISIS), a terrorist organization of Muslims. Craftsmen hacked about 5,000 militant accounts. This allowed them to find out where the militants were planning to carry out terrorist attacks. Anonymous published the results of their actions, and the world shook. Among the intended targets were France, Italy, the USA, Lebanon, and Indonesia. Now some hackers are working closely with the intelligence services of the above-mentioned countries in order to prevent a tragedy.
During the war with ISIS, Turkey also suffered from hackers. Turkish President Erdogan, Anonymous hackers found out how loyal he is to and promised the Turkish government retaliatory measures. A series of attacks were carried out on government servers, as a result of which they were blocked. In addition, Anonymous promised to “crash” the servers of Turkish airports and banks and completely paralyze their work.
Some IT security experts consider Anonymous's "war" against ISIS to be a frivolous endeavor. As one of the experts said, “they haven’t brought any particular harm to each other and are unlikely to do so, since on both sides there are people incompetent in terms of protection and hacking.” True, these words are somewhat at odds with how easily hackers overcome various website protections.
Anonymous and China
In addition to ISIS, the Anonymous hacker group also decided to attack China. Hackers were not satisfied with the Chinese government's attitude towards Internet freedom and freedom in general. As a result, they hacked about 500 websites belonging to the Chinese government. The sites were blocked for a long time, and instead of information from the Chinese Communist Party, they contained ways to bypass the blocking of unwanted information imposed by the “repressive government.”
Official China itself does not confirm the attack on its servers. However, the fact is clear. Anonymous decided to raise the people of the Celestial Empire to fight against censorship and restrictions on freedom. On the official Anonymous Twitter channel, hackers call on the people of this country to rise up and, together with them, continue to attack the servers of the Communist Party until “the regime collapses.”
Strike against Russia
Russia has not escaped the interest of hackers either. The Russian organization Anonymous hacked Kremlin websites. True, the hackers did not cause much damage, but it was more of a show of force. Having gained access to the personal data of officials, hackers could “leak” it all into the network. And then another scandal would probably break out.
However, something has leaked. In addition to the official Kremlin website, Anonymous hackers also hacked the website of the Nashi organization, which at one time actively promoted Vladimir Putin. And here very interesting data surfaced about the financial costs of campaigning the population Russian Federation. The hackers promised to put the history of the party’s shady dealings online “ United Russia", if "Nashi" does not stop their propaganda.
True, a biased political motive is beginning to be traced in their actions. Recently, hackers from the Anonymous group published information that does not stand up to any serious criticism, allegedly it was Russia, and not Ukraine, that cut off the water to Crimea. According to them, Russia deliberately turned off the pumps and paralyzed the water supply, blaming Ukraine for this, in order to increase the level of its influence in Crimea. The assumption is more than absurd.
Other countries
Anonymous hackers did not ignore other states, which caused their displeasure with one or another action. They carried out hundreds of attacks on websites. The website of the Prime Minister of Japan, for example, was inaccessible for a very long time. The US only recently restored the CIA server after their attacks. And in London, hackers broke into the servers of well-known companies Visa and MasterCard. In Canada, government websites were also attacked. Again, the Church of Scientology website was subjected to DDoS attacks in the United States. One gets the feeling that Anonymous has declared war not only on ISIS or China, but on all countries and governments at once.
Instead of a conclusion
Anonymous amazes with their abilities. Attacking well-protected servers of various countries is a rather difficult and troublesome task. The only thing that helps them is that the hackers are scattered all over the world, and identifying them is not so easy. But failures also happen. For example, in London, two people were arrested during an attack on MasterCard and Visa.
When they start talking to me about “almighty” and “elusive” hackers, I remember the famous phrase from Gaidai’s “Operation Y”: “There will be no theft! Everything has already been stolen before us! This is mere nonsense, you just need to stage the theft. You you need to break the lock, leave traces of the removal of the goods, and calmly leave without taking anything!”
However, it is still argued that everything can be hacked. Well, or almost everything. Today, hacker attacks have become so popular that news about another hack appears almost every day, and experts say that the number of hacker attacks will only increase next year. However, some actions of computer geniuses cause a strong public outcry and remain forever in history. Read about the most notorious hacker attacks.
Hacking the Pentagon
Kevin Mitnick is one of the first and most famous hackers. At the age of 12, he learned to forge bus tickets and rode around the city for free, after which he managed to penetrate the McAuto voice announcement system and communicate with customers.
At the age of 16, Kevin hacked into the Digital Equipment Corporation network and stole software from it. Unfortunately, the programmer was caught by the police and sentenced to one year in prison and another three years under police supervision.
During his student years, Mitnik, using a TRS-80 computer with a processor of less than two megahertz, managed to penetrate the predecessor of the Internet, the ARPANet network, and reached the computers of the US Department of Defense. Of course, security specialists quickly detected the hack, and Mitnick was soon caught and sent to a youth correctional center.
After this, FBI agents accused Kevin of forgery of documents, cloning mobile numbers and a series of break-ins. Then the young hacker was again sentenced to prison. After leaving prison, Kevin Mitnick wrote several books about his hacker adventures, and in 2000, the film “Hacking,” based on his biography, was released. Mitnick now owns a company that deals with computer security.
Vladimir Levin and Citibank
In 1994, Russian hacker Vladimir Levin managed to hack the Citibank payment system and transfer more than $10 million to accounts in the United States, Finland, Israel, Germany and the Netherlands. Most of the transactions were blocked, but some of the money—about $400,000—was never found.
Later, the St. Petersburg hacker was caught and extradited to the United States, where he was sentenced to three years in prison. After some time, information appeared that initially a certain group of Russian hackers gained access to the bank’s internal system, which subsequently sold the hacking algorithm to Levin for $100.
Attack on NASA servers
Another young computer genius was Jonathan James, who at the age of 15 managed to hack the system of his own school, the network of the telecommunications company Bell South, and even the servers of the US Department of Defense. The hacker didn’t stop at simply “penetrating” classified servers—he intercepted about three thousand employee emails and even stole software for controlling the International Space Station from NASA.
James was quickly identified and caught, but due to his minor age, he managed to avoid punishment. True, a few years later the hacker was accused of hacking the TJX chain of stores: investigators conducted several searches at James’s home, but found nothing. The hacker himself was sure that he was destined to go to jail and saw suicide as the only way out of this situation. In his suicide note, he wrote that he did not believe in the justice system.
Chelyabinsk hackers and PayPal
Russian hackers from Chelyabinsk Vasily Gorshkov and Alexey Ivanov managed to hack payment PayPal systems, Western Union and many others - a total of 40 companies in 10 American states. Hackers stole $25 million from 16,000 credit cards.
To catch the attackers, the FBI organized a front company in the United States, where Gorshkov and Ivanov arrived. As a result, they were sentenced to three and four years in prison, respectively. The activities of the FBI caused an international scandal, which is why employees of the Chelyabinsk FSB even opened a case against their American colleagues.
UFO Evidence and Removal of Critical Files
British hacker Gary McKinnon is accused of hacking about a hundred computers of the US Department of Defense and NASA in 2001 and deleting some critical files from the system, as a result of which the ministry's activities were effectively suspended for an entire day. The hacker is also said to have erased information about American weapons after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
McKinnon himself stated that he was looking on secret computers for evidence of concealment of information about UFOs and alien civilizations from the general public. He also claimed that he gained access to unsecured machines and left comments on the government network about its vulnerability.
According to British laws, however, the hacker faced only six months in prison, while in the USA they wanted to “expose” him very long term. McKinnon was soon examined and found to have a form of autism and clinical depression that could lead to suicide. Thanks to the public outcry of this case, the support of many famous people and the risk to life, in October 2012 the issue of extraditing the hacker to the United States was dropped and the criminal prosecution was dropped - now Gary McKinnon is still at large.
Theft source code Windows
In 2004, Microsoft announced that 600 million bytes, 31 thousand files and 13.5 million lines of source code were stolen. operating system Windows 2000. All this data appeared publicly available on the Internet. Initially, the corporation was sure that the leak occurred through a partner company Mainsoft, but it soon became clear that in fact the data was stolen directly from the Microsoft network.
By that time, the corporation had already abandoned the further development of this operating system, so there were large financial losses hacker attack did not bring it, but neither specialists from Microsoft nor the FBI were able to find the perpetrators of the crime, so the company’s reputation was damaged.
Attack on Estonia
In April 2007, a cyber attack was carried out on the whole country at once: hackers hacked the websites of almost all government agencies, as well as news portals, as a result of which their work was suspended for two whole weeks. In addition, some banks were also attacked, so Estonian citizens had problems transferring funds.
To restore the functionality of its systems, Estonia had to disconnect from the external Internet for some time. This cyber attack is called one of the largest in history.
Interestingly, the hacks occurred against the backdrop of worsening relations between Estonia and Russia due to the relocation of war graves from the Second World War and a monument to Soviet soldiers from the center of Tallinn.
Estonian experts claimed that traces of the attack lead to Russia, and some IP addresses even point to the Kremlin. At the same time, they said in Russia that most likely someone changed the IP in order to discredit Moscow.
Buried million
In 2009, Cuban-American hacker Alberto Gonzalez carried out a series of attacks on the Heartland Payment System and stole data from tens of millions of credit cards. In addition, after he was caught by law enforcement, the hacker said that he also hacked the networks of TJX Cos., Bj'S Wholesale Club and Barnes & Noble. Gonzalez resold the data from the cards through the ShadowCrew group he created.
In total, he earned about 10 million dollars, but investigators found only one million, which was buried in the garden of the computer genius's parents. Alberto Gonzalez was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Computer worm for nuclear reactors
In 2010, the computer worm Stuxnet penetrated the control network of Iran's nuclear system and partially disabled it - the program stopped a fifth of the centrifuges and copied recordings from CCTV cameras without security officials noticing that something was wrong.
After the successful attack, there were suggestions that the virus was developed jointly by the intelligence services of Israel and the United States to counter the Iranian nuclear program. Kaspersky Lab experts saw in the worm a prototype of a new type of cyber weapon, which could lead to a new arms race.
Anonymous and a series of attacks
Anonymous is rightfully considered one of the most famous hacker groups. This group has been responsible for many large attacks that caused serious damage to their victims.
In 2010, Anonymous organized the “Retribution” campaign, in which it attacked Visa, PayPal and MasterCard systems because they refused to process payments to the WikiLeaks website. A year later, hackers supported the movement against social inequality under the code name “Occupy Wall Street” and brought down the website of the New York Stock Exchange.
In January 2012, in protest against the closure of the MegaUpload website, hackers from this group carried out the largest DDoS attack, knocking out the websites of many US government agencies and record labels for several hours.
In 2013, Anonymous attacked Israeli websites, and during the Ukrainian crisis, they attacked the websites of Russian media and Russian government agencies.
The first hacker in the USSR
In 1983, the USSR experienced the first high-tech crime in history - software at AVTOVAZ was hacked, as a result of which the assembly line stopped for three days. A precedent has arisen: a crime has been committed for which no punishment is provided.
The student who hacked the CIA director then hacked the FBI director
A hacker known as Cracka recently claimed responsibility for hacking the AOL account of CIA Director John Brennan and leaked all the data found in the head of the intelligence agency's email to WikiLeaks. Now Cracka has said that Brennan is not his last victim. The hacker claims to have hacked FBI Deputy Director Mark Giuliano and his wife.
Cracka tweeted links to Pastebin and Cryptobin (password: cwa), congratulating readers on November 5th. The links are located detailed information(full name, addresses, email, positions) about 3,500 civil servants: military, police and officials. The hacker claims that this is not all the information he has. The Pastebin resource has already deleted the publication.
The hacker also claims that he managed to get to the personal email of FBI Deputy Director Mark Giuliano (pictured above), who had previously made very aggressive statements regarding the hack mailbox director of the CIA. In particular, Giuliano promised to catch the hackers and make the CWA (Crackas With Attitude) group, which includes Cracka, a good example. Apparently, the hackers were angry about this.
The teenager also stated that he was able to find Giuliano's mobile number and repeat what had previously been done with the CIA director: call him.
"I called and asked Mark and he was like, 'I don't know who you are, but you better be careful now.' And he hung up. I kept calling, but he freaked out and stopped answering,” Cracka told Motherboard reporters after chatting with them. “We didn’t target him for anything interesting, we targeted him because the FBI (sic) is studying us.”
Representatives of the Federal Bureau of Investigation refused to comment on the situation, as well as to confirm or deny the fact that Giuliano’s email was hacked.
From the evil programmer and James Bond's nemesis in GoldenEye to the biggest cybercrime in American history, Russian hackers are notorious for their questionable skills. And while hackers from other countries can often be motivated by an ideology, most Russian cybercriminals have developed a reputation as digital pickpockets more interested in wiping out other people's bank accounts than making public statements.
And while it has long been accepted that most hackers are simply crooks, cybercrime is still often admired for the technique and intelligence it brings, creating a heady cocktail of art, science and criminal intent. And while Russian hackers may be less active than their Chinese and Latin American counterparts, the quality of their attacks makes them world leaders in this field. Here are some of the Russian names that have caused panic in the cybersecurity world.
1. Anonymous International
This hacker group is also known as "Humpty Dumpty"(in Western folklore, a similar character is called Humpty-Dumpty). Arguably the most prominent hacker group in Russia at present, Anonymous International has claimed responsibility for a large series of recent cyberattacks and document leaks. Hackers published personal archives Email several Russian government officials and stole various secret documents (for example, reports on spying on opposition leaders after protests in Moscow). But their most famous act was hacking Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev's Twitter account and posting several humorous tweets on his behalf for half an hour, while Medvedev's representatives made every conceivable effort to regain control of account. They do not motivate their interest by a thirst for money. However, because the group is so secretive, many still question its methods, motives and moral character. The group’s website contains an archive of stolen files, for which it was blocked by Roskomnadzor. However, it can be viewed using a VPN.
2. Vladimir Levin
Levin, a biochemist from St. Petersburg, is a cult figure in Russian cybercrime and is considered one of the fathers of hacking. In 1994, Levin and a team of accomplices gained access to Citibank and transferred more than $10 million to various accounts in different countries. Levin was promptly caught and convicted in 1998 in the United States. It was a big performance. Levin did not speak English at the time of the crime (he learned the language in prison in America. Apart from computer technology, this was the only skill he mastered), and journalists described him as “something between a hippie and Rasputin.” After Levin was found guilty, various hacker groups from St. Petersburg claimed that they were the ones who gained access to Citibank, which they later sold to Levin for one hundred dollars.3. Igor Klopov
Klopov's story is similar to American Hustle, but marked by a naive perception of the American Dream. The 24-year-old Moscow State University graduate used the Forbes list of the 400 richest people on the planet to find his targets. Then, in Moscow, he used his laptop to find American accomplices, promising them money, holidays in five-star hotels and limousines. Using what the state prosecutor would later call "a combination of clever and time-tested Internet techniques, such as forging a driver's license," Klopov and his accomplices stole $1.5 million and tried to steal another $10 million, which they were caught doing. Igor Klopov pleaded guilty and was sentenced to prison in 2007.
