The most famous hackers and their attacks. The Russian-speaking Silence group attacks banks and consists of only two people Famous hacker groups

High technologies, coding information and solving mysteries are the main interests of modern hackers in the world. Most of them prefer to remain in the shadows, because the nicknames of hackers are often hidden, in other cases, almost nothing is known about the life of active network users. But still there is a certain number of hackers who are known to the whole world.

Popular American hackers and their nicknames

The researchers compiled their list of the most advanced hackers in America. Among the most popular was Dark Dante. The nickname of the hacker is translated as "dark Dante", which was worn by American Kevin Poulsen. Today the guy is called "honorary retired hacker." His main specialization is hacking telephone lines.

At one time, Kevin won a Porsche, which was played on the air of the radio station KIIS-FM, due to his ability to cheat the system. On the other hand, he also engaged in an active network search for individuals who were looking for pornographic videos on the network. Unfortunately, Poulsen did not stop there and decided to prove his abilities to the whole world by infiltrating the FBI database. After that, he was sentenced to 5 years. And today Kevin works as an editor of one of the American magazines and often describes his hacker exploits.

C0mrade is another alias for a hacker, which means “comrade” in English. Its owner Jonathan James is famous for his criminal biography. And he was convicted at the age of 16 for the malicious code that he posted on the server of the US Department of Defense. Interestingly, in 1999, Jonathan attacked the NASA databases for the first time, for the protection of which the management spent more than 1.7 million dollars. After that, the guy was convicted. However, in 2007, a scandal thundered again: someone stole data from customers' credit cards and suspicions fell on the former hacker. He failed to prove his innocence to the person involved, so he found the only way out and shot himself in the same year.

Homeless hacker has become another netizen famous for his abilities. In translation, the nickname for a hacker means "homeless hacker", since Adrian Lamo almost always used public computers, which made it extremely difficult to figure him out. At one time, he hacked the Yahoo! search engine, the server of the Bank of America and was even able to access data The New York Times. As punishment, Adrian paid a $65,000 fine and spent several years under house arrest. Today the guy is one of America's famous journalists.

Nicky Russian hackers

Nicknames of hackers from Russia are often recognizable at first sight. The most popular of them is Magg, which belongs to Alexei Belan. In 2012, he hacked the networks of large American companies and also used the personal data of employees. To this day, Belan has not been found, and his trail has been lost in Athens. Perhaps today the hacker is in Russia.

The nicknames of hackers in the world are often united by hacker groups and have a single name, like, for example, the names of hackers in one of the Russian groups - Fancy Bear, which means "unusual bear." Interestingly, its members are credited with collaborating with the Kremlin. At one time, they attacked US defense sites.

Also, the Fancy Bear group is associated with direct interference in the election of the President of America. And in 2016, they were accused of cyberattacking Macron's election state.

The most famous hacker groups

Today the world knows the most active hacker groups: Anonymous, Lizard Squad and The Lulz Boat. One of the well-known hacker structures is Anonymous, which means “anonymous”, which has been operating since 2003. This is an international organization that does not have a single control center. Since 2015, they have become associated with cyberterrorists, and the Times magazine noted that Anonymous is one of the most influential organizations in the world.

Lizard Squad is another group of hackers. It means "team of lizards". It was founded in 2014, but despite the fact that it lasted for about 6 months, it has become one of the most famous in the world. This organization is known for repeated attacks on the game servers Destini, League of Legends. Initially, their actions were not taken seriously, but in the future it became known that Lizard Squad actively shared posts in support of ISIS and the DPRK. Today, most of the participants are under arrest for acts of fraud and unauthorized access to servers.

The Lulz Boat is one of the three most famous hacker groups. Was founded in 2011. Translated, the band's nickname means "laughing boat". They gained access to Sony user accounts, and also attacked the website of the US Senate and police structures. Already in 2012, most of the participants were arrested. But it is also interesting that almost all information regarding the activities of The Lulz Boat was leaked to the police by the leader of this hacker group, Hector Xavier, since he was recruited by the authorities back in 2011.

Single hackers and their groups have recently become commonplace for most network users. Large companies are actively involved in the protection of personal data even today, but every day it becomes known about new cyber attacks on servers. Nicknames of hackers are often not disclosed and remain only in the personal files of hackers, however, information about the most famous and clever ones is leaked online from their fans, followers or even accomplices.

On October 13, it was announced that hackers had hacked into the Twitter account of Hillary Clinton campaign chief John Podesta, calling on him to vote for Republican rival Donald Trump. The Clinton headquarters has been attacked before. It is assumed that Russian hackers are behind the hacking of computer systems this summer.

On June 27, 2016, the OurMine hacker group hacked into the account of the CEO of Google Inc. Sundara Pichai on Quora. It is also assumed that on September 13, it was Russian hackers who hacked into the computer systems of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). From the information received, the world learned that American athletes were doping with the permission of doctors. To date, the last known attack is related to the hacking of the website of the Russian Foreign Ministry on October 23. The hacker who hacked the site wrote: "Tie it up."

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 are stealing user account databases, as happened in September 2014 when scammers stole 500 million user data from Internet company Yahoo. Some hackers sit in their garages with laptops stealing data. bank cards for easy money, while others get paid 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 was involved in a program to spy on millions of Americans. However, the sense of justice prevailed, and Snowden told about all the crimes of the NSA to the world. Age hackers, tired of such a life, are engaged in advising companies and ordinary people on computer security issues.

In 2010, it became known that alleged American or Israeli hackers launched computer network Iranian nuclear power plants and uranium enrichment plants Staxnet virus. The virus sabotaged the operation of centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium ore, so that later it would 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. Last but not least, this is the merit of anonymous hackers on the state payroll. Your attention -top of the world's most active hacker groups.

Bureau 121

There is catastrophically little information about the North Korean hacker group Bureau 121. It is known that these people are part of the North Korean army and perform tasks for the state related to the theft and search for information, as well as protecting the country's computer systems from foreign hackers. North Korean hackers also attack other countries, in particular, South Korea. Attacks on South Korean gaming services, websites public institutions, leading companies, banks.

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 North Korea's Automation University. The group consists of about 1,800 young people who operate around the world, including outside of North Korea. The need to operate outside the country is explained by the extremely weak information infrastructure of North Korea.

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 brings together mainly German-speaking hackers.

This group first consulted with legal experts before their attacks to make sure their actions were legal.

This suggests that these people have their own specific code of conduct. In part, their strategy of legitimacy ensured the group's survival for such a long period of time. However, not everyone in this huge group acted exclusively within the law, because the CCC is for the most part a disorganized group.CCC hackers became known in the 1980s when they notified the Deutsche Bundespost (former German postal company) that their computer systems weren't reliable enough, making them easy targets for early self-serving hackers. The Deutsche Bundespost provider arrogantly stated that everything was in order. CCC activists proved the ISP wrong when they stole DM 134,000 from mailers' accounts. The money was returned the day after the attack.

morpho

Morpho or "Wild Neutron" is a well-sponsored group of high-profile hackers who have been taking orders for pharmaceutical, investment and technology companies since 2011.

However, this is not a government group because their activities usually involve stealing insider information for money.

The Morpho structure is very interesting. Morpho includes many small groups that use high-end software and technology. Their networks are dispersed, they use bitcoin to pay for the hosting provider, and they also use many complex virtual machines.

Syrian Electronic Army

The Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) is a hacker group that sympathizes with the Syrian government and is also linked to 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 resourceful. For example, in one tweet they sent from President Obama's Twitter account, they briefly crashed the Dow Jones index on the New York Stock Exchange.

Hackers wrote that President Barack Obama was injured in a bombing at the White House. The SEA also tweeted on behalf of the BBC account that Saudi weather stations were hit by a camel collision. Computer security specialists suggest that the SEA hackers may be from Iran, as they are well versed in spoken English and humor. Probably all Iranians understand these issues, since experts draw such conclusions.

Anonymous

Anonymous is the most famous group of hackers on the Internet. Mostly made up of Americans. The organization was born 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 conditional image of the hero of English history Guy Fawkes, which was created 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' actions were liberal or anti-state. Activists advocate the abolition of state control of the Internet and censorship.

The most famous actions of Anonymous are connected with 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 a weak link in any system, and it is especially dangerous if this person gives up. Because of his ego, vanity and self-interest, many can suffer. Anonymous is first and foremost an idea. This idea has allowed this organization to exist for so long.

Tarkh Andishan

Tarh 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 went two ways: a network struggle unit called Tah Andishan was created, as well as Ajax, which was formed from the already 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 secret US defense industry data through a phishing attack.

Tarh 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 trick airport security systems into spoofing people's identities. Tarkh Andishan hackers also hacked industrial facilities of oil and gas companies and telecommunications infrastructure of various organizations.

Dragonfly

Dragonfly is a state-sponsored group of hackers based in Russia and Eastern Europe. Their main targets are the electrical grids, the energy industry, and the command systems of the states of Europe and the United States. Dragonfly is listed as a constantly active threat.Dragonfly activists introduced trojans into legally distributed software for industrial control systems, which is very similar to the Staxnet virus. This malware can disrupt the operation of many industrial and infrastructure facilities, which makes the Dragonfly grouping an extremely dangerous adversary.

APT28/ Fancy Bear / Sofacy / Pawn storm / Sednit

A group of hackers that, according to experts, operates primarily from the Russian time zone at the suggestion of the Russian government. The goals of the organization are of interest to Russia, and in their work, the hackers of this organization use very modern and high-quality methods, which was proved by the recent WADA hack.At one time, hackers hacked into NATO systems, the Polish government, various Georgian ministries, and OSCE computer systems. It is noteworthy that hackers are active in the territory where the treaty on the extradition of criminals to the United States does not apply.

Russian hackers are infamous for their questionable skills, from evil programmer and nemesis James Bond in Goldeneye to the biggest cybercrime in American history. And while hackers from other countries can quite often be motivated by an ideology, most Russian cybercriminals have developed a reputation as digital pickpockets, more interested in cleaning other people's bank accounts than public statements.

And while it has long been assumed that most hackers are just scammers, 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 the attacks makes them world leaders in this area. Here are some of the Russian names that have sowed 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 notorious hacker group in Russia today, Anonymous International has claimed responsibility for a major series of recent cyberattacks and document leaks. Hackers published personal archives Email several Russian government officials and stole various classified documents (such as reports of spying on opposition leaders after the protests in Moscow). But their most notorious 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 with a thirst for money. However, because the group is very secretive, many still question its methods, motives, and moral character. The group's website hosted an archive of stolen files, for which it was blocked by Roskomnadzor. However, it can be viewed via 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 know English at the time of the crime (he learned the language in prison in America. Besides computer technology, this was the only skill he mastered), and journalists described him as "something between hippies and Rasputin." After Levin was found guilty, various hacker groups from St. Petersburg claimed that it was they who gained access to Citibank, which they later sold to Levin for a hundred dollars.

3. Igor Klopov

Klopov's story is similar to the American Hustle, but marked by a naive take on 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 goals. Then, in Moscow, he found American accomplices from his laptop, promising them money, vacations in five-star hotels and limousines. Using what the state prosecutor would later call "a combination of clever and time-honored Internet techniques, such as forging a driver's license," Klopov and his accomplices stole $1.5 million and attempted to steal another $10 million, and were caught. Igor Klopov pleaded guilty and was sentenced to prison in 2007.

4. Koobface gang

Unlike most of the other hackers on this list, members of the Koobface (Facebook anagram) Gang - all, as it turned out later, Russians from St. Petersburg - did not attack companies or people directly. Instead, they created a computer worm that they launched into various social networks(Facebook, Skype, Gmail, Yahoo Messenger and many others) to infect user accounts and steal their personal data. The investigation into the group's crimes has shed light on the intricate systems that prevented the police from even estimating the resources needed to sort out its activities: “All revenues were generated from thousands of individual micro-transactions, amounting to no more than a fraction of a penny each. In doing so, the victims were scattered across dozens of national jurisdictions.” The Koobface worm lured users with links with captions like "You must watch this video!" or "You won't believe what your friend X said about you!" - a strategy popular among hackers. The worm was discovered and shut down in 2012 after the names of members of the Koobface Gang were made public in the media.

5. Vladislav Khorokhorin

Hiding under the nickname BadB, Khorokhorin opened two online stores selling data of bank card holders. The commercial features a cartoonish BadB wearing an earflap, selling credit card information for cartoon characters that include George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice. He ran his illegal business for 8 years before he was arrested in 2010 in France. Comments like "R.I.P. BadB" under his Youtube promo only confirm Horokhorin's status as a successful hacker. After his arrest, Khorokhorin hired Arkady Bukh, a well-known New York lawyer who specializes in cybercrime. Bukh claimed that Khorokhorin was not BadB, and in an interview with Forbes said that his client made his millions as a Tesla Motors dealer in Moscow. Tesla, which has never had dealers in Russia, denied this claim. In 2013, Horokhorin was sentenced to 88 months in prison and paid $125,739 in compensation.

When people start talking to me about "almighty" and "elusive" hackers, I remember Gaidai's famous phrase from "Operation Y": "There will be no theft! you need to break the lock, leave traces of the removal of the goods, and calmly leave without taking anything!

However, it is still claimed that everything can be hacked. Or almost everything. Today, hacker attacks have become so popular that news about another hack appears almost every day, and experts say that next year the number of hacker attacks will only increase. However, some actions of computer geniuses cause a strong public outcry and remain forever in history. Read about the most high-profile 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 MakAuto voice alarm system and communicate with customers.

At 16, Kevin hacked into the Digital Equipment Corporation network and stole software from there. Unfortunately, the programmer was caught by the police and sentenced to one year in prison and another three years under police supervision.

In his student days, Mitnick, 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 got to the computers of the US Department of Defense. Of course, security experts quickly fixed the break-in, and soon Mitnick was caught and sent to a youth correctional center.

After that, the FBI agents accused Kevin of forging documents, cloning mobile numbers and a series of hacks. Then the young hacker was again sentenced to prison. After his release from prison, Kevin Mitnick wrote several books about his hacking adventures, and in 2000, the film Hacking, based on his biography, was released. Mitnick now owns a computer security company.

Vladimir Levin and Citibank

In 1994, Russian hacker Vladimir Levin managed to hack payment system Citibank and transfer more than $10 million to accounts in the US, Finland, Israel, Germany and the Netherlands. Most of the transactions were blocked, but some of the money - about 400 thousand dollars - could not be 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 access to internal system bank was received by a certain group of Russian hackers, who subsequently sold Levin the hacking algorithm for $100.

Attack on NASA servers

Another young computer genius was Jonathan James, who at the age of 15 managed to hack into his own school system, the network of the telecommunications company Bell South, and even the servers of the US Department of Defense. The hacker did not stop at a simple "penetration" on secret servers - he intercepted about three thousand letters from employees and even stole the software for managing the International Space Station from NASA.

James was quickly figured out and caught, but due to his minor age, he managed to avoid punishment. True, a few years later the hacker was accused of breaking into the TJX chain of stores: the investigators conducted several searches of James's house, but did not find anything. 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 Aleksey Ivanov succeeded in 2000 in hacking PayPal, Western Union and many other payment systems - a total of 40 companies in 10 American states. Hackers stole $25 million from 16,000 credit cards.

To catch the intruders, 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, because of which the employees of the Chelyabinsk FSB even opened a case against their American colleagues.

UFO evidence and deletion of critical files

British hacker Gary McKinnon is accused of hacking into about 100 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 activities of the ministry were actually suspended for a whole 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 withholding information about UFOs and alien civilizations from the general public. He also claimed to have gained access to unprotected machines and left comments on the government network about her vulnerability.

Under British law, however, the hacker was threatened with only six months in prison, while in the United States they wanted to "set" him for a very long time. 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 extradition of the hacker to the United States was dropped, and the criminal prosecution was discontinued - now Gary McKinnon is still at large.

Theft source code Windows

In 2004, Microsoft claimed that 600 million bytes, 31,000 files, and 13.5 million lines of source code had been stolen from it. operating system Windows 2000. All this data appeared in the public domain on the network. Initially, the corporation was sure that the leak occurred through a partner company Mainsoft, but it soon became clear that in reality the data was stolen directly from the Microsoft network.

By that time, the corporation had already abandoned further development this operating system, so the hacker attack did not bring large financial losses, however, neither Microsoft nor the FBI managed 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 immediately on the whole country: 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 the citizens of Estonia had problems with the transfer of funds.

In order to restore the performance of their systems, Estonia had to disconnect from the external Internet for a while. This cyberattack is called one of the largest in history.

Interestingly, the hacks took place against the backdrop of aggravated relations between Estonia and Russia due to the transfer of military 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. In Russia, at the same time, they said that most likely someone changed the IP in order to discredit Moscow.

Buried million

An American hacker of Cuban origin Alberto Gonzalez carried out a series of attacks on the Heartland Payment System in 2009 and stole data from tens of millions of credit cards. In addition, after being caught by law enforcement, the hacker revealed 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, but investigators found only one million, which was buried in the garden of the parents of a computer genius. Alberto Gonzalez was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Computer worm for nuclear reactors

In 2010, the Stuxnet computer worm infiltrated Iran's nuclear control network and partially disabled it - the program stopped a fifth of the centrifuges and copied CCTV footage without security officials noticing something was wrong.

After the successful attack, there were suggestions that the virus was developed jointly by the Israeli and US intelligence agencies to counter the Iranian nuclear program. Kaspersky Lab experts saw the worm as a prototype of a new type of cyberweapon that could lead to a new arms race.

Anonymous and a series of attacks

One of the most famous hacker groups is considered to be Anonymous. On account of this group, many major attacks that caused serious damage to their victims.

In 2010, Anonymous organized the "Retaliation" campaign, in which they 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, codenamed "Occupy Wall Street" and brought down the site 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 companies for several hours.

In 2013, Anonymous attacked Israeli websites, and during the Ukrainian crisis, they attacked the websites of Russian media and Russian government structures.

The first hacker in the USSR

In 1983, in the USSR, there was absolutely the first high-tech crime in history - the software at AVTOVAZ was hacked, as a result of which the conveyor stopped for three days. A precedent has arisen: a crime has been committed for which no punishment is provided.

The student who hacked into the director of the CIA then hacked into the director of the FBI

A hacker who goes by the pseudonym Cracka recently claimed responsibility for hacking into the AOL account of CIA director John Brennan and leaked all the data found in the mail of the head of the Wikileaks intelligence agency. 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(name, address, email, position) about 3500 civil servants: military, police and officials. The hacker claims that this is not all the information he has. Pastebin has already deleted the post.

The hacker also claims to have managed to get to the personal mail 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 case in point. Apparently, this pissed off the hackers.

The teenager also said that he managed to find Giuliano's mobile number and repeat what had previously been done with the director of the CIA: 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 hung up. I kept calling, but he freaked out and stopped answering,” Cracka told reporters from Motherboard after chatting with them. “We didn’t target him for something interesting, we targeted him because the FBI is (sic) looking into us.”

Representatives of the Federal Bureau of Investigation declined to comment on the situation, as well as to confirm or deny the fact that Giuliano's mail was hacked.

Anonymous is an international hacker group that has been hacking government websites for a long time.

Birth of a legend

Hackers from the Anonymous group are now known all over the world. Not the hackers themselves, of course, but just their actions. But how did it all start, and what were their goals?

In its first phase of development, Anonymous saw nothing more than freedom of the Internet and entertainment as their goal. They easily DDoS-attacked the servers of copyright holders, carried out various playful and not quite actions, but soon a bunch of amateurs grew to a decent size and turned into an international organization of hackers Anonymous, terrifying the governments of many countries. These cyber fighters easily hack into the most secure sites, be it the CIA or the Pentagon.

In fact, the Anonymous hacker group operates so successfully and is not caught only due to the fact that none of the members of the group has ever seen the other live, 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 the UK to China, so there is no way to track them down. The police can 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. In the Russian Federation operates group Anonymous Russia. 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 so long ago, Anonymous hackers declared war on (ISIS), a Muslim terrorist organization. Craftsmen hacked about 5,000 accounts of militants. This allowed them to find out where the militants were planning to carry out attacks. Anonymous published the results of their actions, and the world shook. Among the intended targets were France, Italy, the United States, Lebanon, Indonesia. Now some hackers are working closely with the intelligence services of the above countries in order to prevent a tragedy.

During the war of hackers with ISIS, Turkey also got it. Turkish President Erdogan, Anonymous-hackers found out how loyal he is to and promised the Turkish government retaliatory measures. A series of attacks were made on the government's servers, as a result of which they were blocked. In addition, Anonymous promised to “put down” the servers of Turkish airports and banks and completely paralyze their work.

Some IT security experts consider Anonymous's "war" against ISIS to be frivolous. As one of the experts said, “they did not bring much harm to each other and are unlikely to bring it, since on both sides there are people who are incompetent in terms of protection and hacking.” True, these words are somewhat at odds with how easily hackers overcome various site protections.

Anonymous and China

In addition to ISIS, the Anonymous hacker group also decided to attack China. The hackers were not satisfied with the attitude of the Chinese government towards the freedom of the Internet and freedom in general. As a result, they hacked about 500 websites owned by 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 there. Anonymous decided to raise the people of the Celestial Empire to fight against censorship and restriction of freedom. On the official Anonymous Twitter channel, the hackers are urging the people of this country to rise up and continue attacking the Communist Party's servers with them until "the regime collapses."

Attack on Russia

Not spared the interest of hackers and Russia. The Russian organization Anonymous hacked the 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 "merge" it all into the network. And then another scandal would surely flare up.

However, something has leaked out. In addition to the official Kremlin website, Anonymous hackers also hacked into the website of the Nashi organization, which at one time actively promoted Vladimir Putin. And here very interesting data surfaced on the financial costs of agitation of the population of the Russian Federation. The hackers promised to put the history of the dark deeds of the United Russia party on the net if Nashi did not stop their propaganda.

True, a biased political motive begins 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 blocked 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 its level of influence in the Crimea. The assumption is more than absurd.

Other countries

Anonymous-hackers did not ignore other states, which caused their displeasure with certain actions. They carried out hundreds of attacks on websites The website of the Prime Minister of Japan, for example, was unavailable for a very long time. The US only recently rebuilt the CIA server after their attacks. And in London, hackers hacked into the servers of the well-known companies Visa and MasterCard. Government websites were also attacked in Canada. Again, the website of the Church of Scientology was subjected to DDoS attacks in the USA. 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 amaze with their abilities. Attacking well-protected servers of various states is a rather difficult and troublesome business. They are rescued only by the fact that crackers are scattered all over the world, and it is not so easy to calculate them. But there are also failures. For example, in London, two people were arrested during the attack on MasterCard and Visa.