In today's exploration of cyber security tech news.
The battle for Ukraine continues, and so do the operations in cyberspace.
In this video I'll be covering what's happened, in the last day or two in cyber and information
warfare when it comes to the invasion of Ukraine.
Our first topic is, interesting.
It's being widely reported that Anonymous have hacked into Russian state TV channels
and broadcasted Ukrainian songs to the people of Russia.
There's a video of a guy flicking through Russian TV channels and they're all playing
pro-Ukrainian songs.
There's another example, where Russian TV was apparently hacked to play videos of what's
going on, on the ground, in Ukraine - showing the chaos and destruction to the people of
Russia.
Now, I was quite surprised when I saw news of this "hack", it was widely shared on reddit,
twitter, tiktok, and on lots of mainstream news sites.
However, and I hate to be a party pooper, but all is not as it seems.
Now, I obviously want to bring you guys the truth, and given just how many people have
been watching my videos on Ukraine the last couple of days, I feel like I have a responsibility
to call out fake "hacking news" when I see it, especially when that news goes viral.
And this "hack" of Russian TV is more than sus.
The only evidence of it are the same 2 clips floating around the interwebs - if this did
actually happen you would expect social media to be absolutely spammed with videos, also
nobody can even say which tv channels specifically were hacked.
And, there are no instances that I can see of this being reported on by any Russian media.
Now of course, Russian media is heavily regulated, hell - Russian news sites are effectively
banned from even calling what's going on in Ukraine a war.
But, if you take RT for example, Putin's propaganda news agency - they have reported on Anonymous'
operations in recent days, and they are not afraid to use news of actual hacks as opportunities,
turning them into pro Putin propaganda, somehow.
I am going out on a limb here, calling this BS.
And I'd be happy to be wrong, because if it is true, that is kind of epic, but I have
to keep you guys informed of reality and call out BS when I see it.
But regardless of some hacking news being fake, the truth of what really is going on
is just as interesting - so let's get some things that actually happened.
Trolls identifying as Anonymous have been screwing with Putin's private yacht.
If you didn't know Putin has a super yacht, because of course he does.
It looks pretty amazing and it apparently cost 100 million dollars - but anyway.
Anonymous hackers, have been manipulating the ship "Automatic Identification System"
- this is a system that allows for tracking and identification of ships at sea.
This makes websites like marinetraffic possible, where you can see live tracking of ships,
where they're heading and some information about them
Well people have been messing with this system, the destination of Putin's super yacht was
changed to "Anonymous", with an arrival date of April 1st.
They then changed the location of the ship to make it look like it had crashed into Ukraine's
snake island - of course a reference to the now famous attack on snake island.
They then changed the destination of the ship to "hell".
Putin's super yacht likely became a target for trolls because it abruptly set sail from
Germany to Russia last month, making sure it would be out of the reach of the West in
case western countries decided to impose sanctions on Russia and perhaps tried to impound the
ship.
The methods Anonymous used in this troll are not new, people screwing with this "automatic
identification system" has been a problem for a while now.
Next up, you'll remember in my previous video I talked about how Conti - one of the world's
most infamous and dangerous ransomware gangs pledged their full allegiance to Putin, vowing
to use their hacking capabilities against the West - only to change their minds shortly
after, redacting their support for Putin.
When I covered this a few days ago we didn't know why they took back their support for
Putin, however there have been some rather explosive developments.
It turns out Conti works with Ukrainian affiliates, one of which was not happy with their group's
support for Putin.
So much so that he created an anonymous twitter account dedicated to leaking confidential
Conti data.
The leaks contain over a year's worth of confidential chat logs between various Conti members, and
all this whole leak is publicly downloadable.
In addition to those chat logs, there's internal conti software, training material and so on
- he's basically dumped everything he can get his hands on, to create as much damage
to the Conti cyber crime gang as possible.
This dump reveals that the conti cyber crime gang has in the past few years received over
65,000 bitcoin in ransom payments, at today's price that's 2.7 billion US dollars - it's
absolute insanity, but what effect will these leaks will have on Conti?
We can only wait and watch - their dark web blog remains online, and they're still operating,
leaking data from their victims that refuse to pay their ransom.
Next up, the Russian news agency TASS had their website hacked and defaced by Anonymous.
They replaced the website with an anti war message, urging Russians to help stop the
war.
When translated, it says "5300 Russians and Ukrainians have been killed in 4 days", more
than the first Chechen war.
Now, it's possible this wasn't a hack from an external group, but rather an inside job,
as the message reads "some of us will be fired or even jailed, but we can't take it anymore"
- signing off with "indifferent Journalists of Russia" - to be fair I think the "indifferent"
bit is just a bad translation, these guys sound anything but indifferent.
Now, whilst website defacements are often seen as vanity projects on the part of hacktivists,
this case is kinda different.
Keep in mind, a lot of Russians, especially the older generation mainly get their news
from state run media - TASS is a state run media organisation, so perhaps operations
like these will sow the seed of doubt in the minds of the Russian people.
So this is what's been going on in the last couple of days.
There is a lot I haven't covered in this video, so make to hit the bell icon and turn notifications
on, so you're notified as soon as my next update on the Ukrainian war goes live.
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As always, if you found this video helpful please make sure to give me a like to let
me know, stay tuned for more hacking videos, and have a good one.