House > anti piracy > site blocking >
A hacker claiming to be affiliated with the decentralized international hacktivist collective Anonymous claims to have breached and leaked the database of the Russian telecommunications and censorship agency Roscomnadzor. The 820 GB trove reportedly contains more than 360,000 files, and although it has yet to be examined in detail, it may still open Russia's draconian hack site and media censorship operation.
For many years, we have been reporting on the efforts of the Russian authorities to restrict access to Internet content deemed "dangerous" by the state.
Our focus has been on the relatively narrow niche of copyright issues. They typically involve the Russian telecommunications agency Roscomnadzor and the use of powerful filtering and detection systems to block pirate sites that stubbornly refuse to remove movies and TV shows.
Importantly, the same systems can be used to block almost any website or service that goes against the Kremlin's vision for Russia. Tor included.
Those powers have been increasingly on display since Putin's invasion of Ukraine. After the authorities passed a law effectively banning honest journalism with penalties of up to 15 years in prison, Roscomnadzor went on to block Twitter, Facebook and any media outlet that did not toe the state propaganda line.
VPNs that remove censorship were also affected renewed attack in an effort to prevent accurate reports from reaching the country. But now, as Russian forces face stubborn resistance in Ukraine, Roscomnadzor itself has been violated.
Anonymous 'Hacks and Breaches' Roscomnadzor
In an announcement posted Thursday on Substack, the transparency group Distributed Denial of Secrets reveals that a source claiming to be affiliated with the decentralized hacktivist collective Anonymous has gained access to a trove of Roscomnadzor data.
According to DDoSecrets, the data comes from Roscomnadzor in Bashkortostan, Russia's most populous republic with around four million people. It's a huge treasure: 820GB of data spread across hundreds of thousands of files in tens of thousands of directories, so it will take time to properly examine what's inside.
But for now, DDoSecrets provides a brief summary.
What's in the leak?
The release of the leaked data is presented in two parts. The first, which contains 363,994 files in 43,593 directories, comes to a total of 526.9 GB. It also contains new data, with some files as recent as March 5, 2022, which is more than a week after the invasion.
The second part is said to be two directories containing raw data files in proprietary formats for two databases, together exceeding 290GB. DDoSecrets says that they will publish the raw data while they find solutions to extract the data. According to the first evaluations, one database is related to legal issues, while the other could be related to human resources procedures.
It appears that DDoSecrets wants to make the files public now to ensure that Roscomnadzor's work is quickly accessible to Russian citizens, should the state decide to follow through on its threat to launch 'Sovereign RuNet'. If that is implemented, it could mean that Russia is disconnected from the Internet in general.
Reach ordinary Russian citizens
โThe source, part of Anonymous, urgently felt that the Russian people should have access to information about their government. They also expressed their opposition to the Russian people being isolated from the independent media and the outside world," the announcement read.
โWe are publishing this statement in anticipation of Russia potentially being cut of the global Internet on March 11, and I hope that the Russians will have time to download this data before then.โ
The Substack post can be found here and leaked data here. Appropriately, given its resistance to blocking, torrents and magnet links are provided to access the data. Any would-be downloader should check the warnings first to make sure they don't succumb to malware and phishing attempts.
