Ukraine crisis
“Putin can’t just be cybered away” – Why a hacker thinks the Anonymous attacks are dangerous
The international hacker collective Anonymous has openly opposed Russia and is shutting down scores of websites and services in Russia.
© Jakub Porzycki / Picture Alliance
The hacker collective Anonymous is fighting together against Russia. The hackers are celebrating successes online, such as government websites that are unavailable, radio stations that are disrupted and TV programs that have been taken over. But the digital partisan fight is obviously not without danger, warns an expert.
The successes of the international hacker community, which acts as “Anonymous”, are – considered – quite impressive. In the last few days, the hackers say they have taken over Russian TV stations, jammed military radio frequencies, taken over countless government websites and even shut down Russian spy satellites. And probably also at the request of the Ukrainian government, its digital minister Mychajlo Fedorov on twitter announced the formation of a digital “IT army”. IT security expert Manuel Atug warns in a guest post on Business Insider: “I can’t recommend quickly emulating Anonymous.”
In Atug’s opinion, Putin “can’t just be cybered away like that.” In his view, one should not believe that the disruption of digital infrastructure could lead to the Russian army withdrawing from Ukraine or giving up. “That’s total nonsense. The cyberwar is secondary,” it says. In a war like this, according to Atug, human lives are at stake and he knows “no Kalashnikovs or bombs that suddenly stop working if you click around a bit.”
Hackers put themselves and others at risk
In addition, according to the expert, who has been a member of the Chaos Computer Club for 20 years and deals with the IT security of critical infrastructure on a daily basis, hacking under the guise of anonymity raises three other major problems.
First, since Anonymous is not an organized group, he believes anyone can claim to be part of the group. This opens up the possibility for state secret services to assume the role of independent Anonymous hackers and make attacks on a country’s critical infrastructure look like a hack by a private individual.
+++ Also read: Hacker collective Anonymous declares cyber war on the Kremlin +++
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Secondly, in the worst case scenario, uncoordinated hacks would hit the wrong people, primarily the Russian civilian population. But if there was no more water running, no more electricity or the ATM no longer giving out money, Atug believes that would be “riots, destruction and aggressiveness” and not an ethical fight against evil.
Thirdly, if you act carelessly, you may endanger yourself. Because as a participant in a war, which Russia’s attack on Ukraine is undoubtedly, you “in extreme cases might even end up on a Russian secret service list of people who attacked the country during the war to have.” Revenge of Russia, including on individuals, does not exclude Atug.
There are ways to be helpful on the internet
Atug writes that anyone who wants to make themselves useful in the digital world can also help without putting themselves in danger. Take social media, for example: even if you don’t have much IT knowledge, you can check images, videos and statements in order to expose false reports and help other users to classify them correctly.
If you are IT-savvy, i.e. able to tap critical infrastructure for vulnerabilities, you should do this on the Ukrainian side and report any vulnerabilities found to the Ukrainian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT). How to help without doing harm.
The Russian population can also be helped: Those who can build so-called proxy systems to give people in Russia access to information from the western world despite state censorship are helping to weaken the Russian propaganda machine.
swell: Business Insider, Independent, Twitter [1], Twitter [2], Twitter [3]