Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

Cybercrime

Anonymous Attacks Ukrainian Government After Demonoid Takedown

Hot NewsAnonymous Targets Australian Spy Agency

Hot NewsAnonymous Targets Australian Spy Agency

Hot NewsFinFisher “Lawful Interception” Spyware Found in Ten Countries, Including the U.S.

OpDemonoid Targets Ukrainian Government

After suffering a major outage last week due to a DDoS, Demonoid, a popular BitTorrent tracker, was taken offline by Ukrainian authorities, allegedly so that the government could earn some brownie points with the United States. In response, Anonymous has launched OpDemonoid, an operation that is targeting sites in the Ukraine.

Anonymous #OpMegaUpload Launches DDoS Attacks

According to sources speaking to Kommersant, a Russian newspaper, and as reported by TorrentFreak, “the raid on Demonoid was timed to coincide with the very first trip of Deputy Prime Minister Valery Khoroshkovsky‘s trip to the United States. On the agenda: copyright infringement.”

OpDemonoid Anonymous“Ukraine had promised the United States that it would improve its attitude and efforts towards enforcing copyright and no doubt its Western partner will be very pleased indeed that Demonoid’s head has been presented on a platter.”

This is what led to Anonymous taking a stance. So far, DDoS attacks against the National Television and Radio Broadcasting Council of Ukraine (nrada.gov.ua), the Ukrainian Agency for Copyright and Related Rights (uacrr.kiev.ua), and the Ukrainian Anti-Piracy Association (apo.kiev.ua), have been the opening salvo.

However, the operation’s planning notes also call for Web defacement too. Should the Ukrainian president’s page (president.gov.ua) be defaced, a prepared replacement page outlines other goals for OpDemonoid.

Related Reading“Anonymous In The Year 2020”

Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.

First, the main objective is to restore Demonoid services by “any means necessary” and facilitate a series of mirrors online. After that, there is retaliation, which is currently ongoing.

“Sergei Burlakov of Ukraine’s Ministry of Internal Affairs has confirmed that a criminal case in Mexico against the owners of Demonoid has been initiated and the tracker is charged with intellectual property rights violations. A future without public trackers is a bleak one my friends. For most of us Demonoid and other public trackers have been about much more than music or movies. They are an incredibly powerful educational tool, facilitating much more than just open piracy. Corporations and governments fear them. Anonymous will not tolerate a world without them,” the text from Anonymous states.

In a previous statement to the public, Anonymous reminded the Ukrainian government that they had faced their wrath before, asking: “Haven’t you, Ukraine, learned anything from the Anonymous Collective? You were attacked once, and yet feel the need to keep censoring us, your people, and every day hard working citizens?”

For this reason alone, the statement concludes, “Ukrainian government, You should have expected us.”

Related NewsAnonymous Targets Australian Spy Agency

RelatedFinFisher “Lawful Interception” Spyware Found in Ten Countries, Including the U.S.

Related: Anonymous Launches “Largest Attack Ever on Government and Music Industry Sites”

Related Reading: Anonymous Targets Formula 1 With DDoS Attacks in #OpBahrain

Written By

Click to comment

Trending

Daily Briefing Newsletter

Subscribe to the SecurityWeek Email Briefing to stay informed on the latest threats, trends, and technology, along with insightful columns from industry experts.

Join the session as we discuss the challenges and best practices for cybersecurity leaders managing cloud identities.

Register

SecurityWeek’s Ransomware Resilience and Recovery Summit helps businesses to plan, prepare, and recover from a ransomware incident.

Register

Expert Insights

Related Content

Cybercrime

The changing nature of what we still generally call ransomware will continue through 2023, driven by three primary conditions.

Cybercrime

A recently disclosed vBulletin vulnerability, which had a zero-day status for roughly two days last week, was exploited in a hacker attack targeting the...

Cybercrime

As it evolves, web3 will contain and increase all the security issues of web2 – and perhaps add a few more.

Cybercrime

Luxury retailer Neiman Marcus Group informed some customers last week that their online accounts had been breached by hackers.

Cybercrime

Zendesk is informing customers about a data breach that started with an SMS phishing campaign targeting the company’s employees.

Cybercrime

Patch Tuesday: Microsoft calls attention to a series of zero-day remote code execution attacks hitting its Office productivity suite.

Artificial Intelligence

The release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022 has demonstrated the potential of AI for both good and bad.

Cybercrime

Satellite TV giant Dish Network confirmed that a recent outage was the result of a cyberattack and admitted that data was stolen.