In today's exploration of cyber security tech news.
Ever since the war in Ukraine kicked off, the hacktivism world has been on overdrive,
it seems that every few hours we hear of some hack committed by Anonymous or some hacktivist
group.
Some of the hacks are rather interesting, but others have just been sensationalised
by the media.
But who carries out these attacks?
Well, as this cyber group tracker shows, most of the hacktivist groups that've appeared
over the past couple weeks, are on the side of the Ukrainians, against Putin and his invading
Russian forces.
But some of them are on the side of the Russians, these guys have been trying to hack, DDoS
and in general just cause problems for Ukrainian computer systems.
Now, I wanted to talk to these guys, find out what motivates them to attack Ukraine
when most people would agree it's their country - Russia - that's clearly in the wrong.
Now, I don't want to start an argument with them, but just pick their brains a little.
As it turns out, I didn't have to reach out to any of these groups, because they've been
watching my videos apparently and reaching out to me.
I recently received an email claiming to be from the "Russian Hacking Group", "The red
bandits", asking me to follow them on "twitter" - now, I get a bunch of random emails like
this, so I was about to delete it, until I realised it was sent from a Ukrainian government
email address.
I of course did my due diligence, and the email was not spoofed - as in it did actually
come from a Ukrainian government mail server.
I checked them out on Twitter to find "The Red Bandits" have been responsible for DDoSing
Ukrainian military websites, hacking Ukrainian police dashcams, and of course they pwned
the Ukrainian government mail server that they used to email me and apparently 500 thousand
other people.
This group has only popped up in the past couple of weeks, so there isn't much information
on them - though one article that suggests "The Red Bandits" is just a front for Russian
intelligence.
Naturally, I was intrigued, and so I slid into their DMs to see if I could get an interview.
They agreed, and a representative of the Red bandits hopped on a call with me.
The guy I spoke to was using a voice changer, because - well, of course he was.
He didn't tell me his name but just that wanted to be called "Bandit".
We spoke for about 45 minutes, and firstly I wanted to build some context around himself
and the group.
Bandit apparently works in a Russian cyber security company, he's a security analyst
and in fact he was talking to me on his lunch break.
Red bandits is made up of 6 people, a couple of the members he knows irl, the others he
met online.
Red Bandits' twitter says they're a cyber crime group - rather than a hacktivist group,
and so I asked him about that - Bandit explained they have previously engaged in cybercrime,
he wouldn't tell me any specifics but said they do that under different group names,
so if they ever get caught then they're only charged for the crimes committed under one
alias.
Judging from how new this particular alias of theirs is, I'd guess that they're pretty
new to hacktivism and they mostly engage in cyber crime.
So at this point I wanted to get to the hacktivism side of things, focus the interview on their
motivations for targeting Ukraine and what they hope to achieve.
I had kind of painted a picture in my head that Bandit was some kind of avid Putin admirer,
who just so happens to have the skills required to mess with Ukraine on the cyber front.
But this mental image was completely wrong, his actual motives are arguably more confusing.
Bandit says that Putin isn't someone he'd want to be friends with, he thinks the invasion
of Ukraine was a step too far and in his words "out of order" - he even added that he doesn't
hate Ukrainians in the slightest - so - I was confused...
why then attack Ukraine?
Well, this seems to be a case of jingoism - as in extreme patriotism, he said to me
and in a tweet, "We support our country even if it is wrong".
He claims he's motivated by protecting Russia, seemingly for no other reason other than that's
the country he happens to live in - and that whilst he wouldn't want to be friends with
Putin, in his words he does respect the guy, "as a president and as a citizen".
I realise this rationale isn't going to satisfy most people, but this is his position, this
is what he told me.
Bandit adds that he wants the war to stop and he feels bad for everyone involved, but
that his actions are only in response to cyber attacks against Russia, and says "I will defend
my country, like I will defend my home" ,"I'm not going to allow my country to be hacked".
Bandit made it very clear that he only ever targets Ukrainian officials and the government,
though, I wanted to get a sense of whether he had any other red lines in his operations,
and so I asked him if in some hypothetical scenario if he thought one of his operations
would result in the deaths of Ukrainians, would he still continue the operation?
After a 5 second pause, and yes, I counted - he replied - "no comment".
Let me know down below, what do you think of that response.
Bandit said he's been receiving a lot of hate messages - I wasn't particularly shocked by
that - however he was confused.
In his words he doesn't understand why they message him, he has sympathy, but he's not
out there shooting missiles - so they don't have to worry about him.
I asked Bandit what people can expect from his group and what he hopes to realistically
achieve, to this he didn't have a clear answer - it didn't sound like anything is in the
pipeline.
This makes me question how committed "Red Bandits" are to their hacktivism - in the
past couple of days they've been using their platform on Twitter to advertise for cyber
crime related jobs, and they also tweeted "We've seen a chance to make millions, we're
gong to take that chance".
It sounds like the hacktivism is a bit of a side project for them, and there are questions
surrounding some of their operations - it's been pointed out that those police dashcams
they supposedly hacked are just public streams you can search for on shodan, and they aren't
even police, but rather private security guards.
Also, their DDoSing of a Ukrainian military website isn't hacking, but their apparent
hack of the Ukrainian government mail server does still stand.
However I need to stress how hard it is to verify this stuff, did they really hack the
mail server itself and email 500 thousand people, or did they just compromise one guy's
email address and use it to message me, this is a guessing game.
In another tweet they claimed to have gained access to an industrial control system, it
seems like some kind of water pump.
But again, how can you verify a screenshot?
I'm not saying they didn't do any of this stuff, only that I can't verify it.
And with people's interest in hacktivism going through the roof the past week or so, a lot
of claims out there on the interwebs will be from people merely looking for clout.
Some things can be verified though, for example a week ago I received an email from "putin@kremlin.ru".
Supposedly someone hacked Putin's own email address and used it to message me.
The group behind this said they had compromised "Putin's personal mail server" - but after
some basic digging, I discovered the email was spoofed, the sender address was completely
fake.
Please, let me know in the comments what you think of the Red Bandits and their motivations.
Also in the last couple of days I interviewed a pro Ukrainian hacktivist group, make to
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