This is an important day for Russia, which commemorates this Monday the victory of the USSR against Nazi Germany on May 9, 1945. On this occasion, Russian President Vladimir Putin gave a televised speech. Pirates took this opportunity to replace the information contained in the TV program listings with anti-war messages.
As you may know, Russia is celebrating on May 9, 2022 the victory of the USSR over Nazi Germany. As tradition dictates, Vladimir Putin took advantage of the event to give a television address. The opportunity for him to draw dangerous parallels between Nazi Germany and the Ukrainian government and to justify the launch of this “special operation” because of the “great dangers” threatening Russia.
Of course, this speech was broadcast live on all Russian TV channels. A golden opportunity for pro-Ukrainian pirates. As BBC journalist Francis Scarr reveals on Twitter, hackers hacked the programming page of the main Russian TV channels to modify the text of the information banners. As a result, the announcement “Speech by Vladimir Putin” was replaced by an anti-war message: “The blood of thousands of Ukrainians and hundreds of their children is on your hands. The television and the authorities are lying to you. No to war”, were able to read the millions of Russian viewers of the MTS, NTV Plus, Rostelocom and Wink channels.
This morning the online Russian TV schedule page was hacked
The name of every program was changed to “On your hands is the blood of thousands of Ukrainians and their hundreds of murdered children. TV and the authorities are lying. No to war” pic.twitter.com/P2uCNz8cqa
—Francis Scarr (@francis_scarr) May 9, 2022
Read also: Anonymous hacks French companies that refuse to leave Russia
Anonymous welcomes this cyberattack
A smooth operation, hailed by the way by Anonymous who published a video this Twitter this Monday which displayed the list of pirated programs. Note that the collective did not claim this cyberattack. Since the beginning of the conflict, the group of pirates has multiplied its actions against Russian infrastructures and institutions.
In March 2022, Anonymous launched one attack per week. First, the collective targeted the Russian space agency and seized many sensitive documents before publishing them. On March 15, the group struck hard by breaking into the servers of the Russian secret services, the FSB. Lately, they decided to hack into thousands of connected printers in the country to broadcast anti-war messages there to warn the population against the Kremlin’s propaganda.
