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Russian hackers hacked

by on23 July 2019


Russia’s Federal Security Service loses 7.5 terabytes of data.

Russia's Federal Security Service, which is no stranger to stealing data itself, has found itself subject to a huge hack.

The attackers managed to steal 7.5 terabyts from a major FSB contractor and exposed several key projects the agency was working on to de-anonymize Tor browsing, scrape data from social media, and cut off Russia’s internet from the rest of the world.

The attack on FSB took place on July 13 when a hacking group that goes by the name 0v1ru$ breached SyTech, a major FSB contractor that works on several internet projects.

The hackers defaced SyTech’s homepage and left a smiling Yoba Face and other pictures to indicate the breach.

BBC Russia listed the major projects the FSB agency was working on:

  • Nautilus: A project launched between 2009 and 2010 to scrape data on social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace
  • Nautilus-S: A research project to de-anonymize Tor users by creating exit nodes that are controlled by the Russian government
  • Nadezhda (Hope in English): This project visualises how Russia is connected to the rest of the Internet and attempts to create a “sovereign internet” that is isolated from the rest of the Internet
  • Reward: Penetrates and performs secret operations on peer-to-peer networks such as BitTorrent, Jabber, OpenFT, and ED2K
  • Mentor: Specially developed for the Russian military unit No. 71330 which serves as the radio-electronic intelligence of Russia’s FSB. A part of this project is to monitor selected email accounts at regular intervals to scan for certain phrases
  • Tax-3: It is the most recent project that offers the ability to manually remove information from the Federal Tax Service on individuals who are under state protection

SyTech’s website has been shut down ever since the breach but then again so has 0v1ru$. The  hacking group’s Twitter account has also been shut down, for reasons unknown.

 

Last modified on 23 July 2019
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