Caxxii, an affiliate of Anonymous hacktivists, has released 128 GB of documents revealing the Russian government’s illegal surveillance tactics to spy on its citizens.
The hacktivist group Anonymous released 128 gigabytes of data from Convex, the leading Russian internet provider, detailing the Kremlin’s alleged illegal monitoring of its citizens across the country.
Such surveillance activities are classified as unauthorized wiretapping, espionage, and warrantless surveillance of civilians, which are against the country’s laws.
In 2015, in Zakharov v. Russia, the European Court of Human Rights warned that the laws governing the country’s System for Operative Investigative Activities surveillance system didn’t offer sufficient and impactful guarantees against arbitrariness and abuse of any secret surveillance system, urging Kremlin to circumvent the legal authorization requirements.
The passage of the Yarovaya Law in 2016 allowed authorities to obtain communication information without needing a court order.
What Data was Dumped?
The alleged data reveals how the Russian government apparently spies on its citizens’ internet and phone usage, and exclusive details of the yet-undisclosed Green Atom surveillance program, which Anonymous claims. was operated by Russia’s Federal Security Service.
The data also contains records of thousands of Russian citizens who were customers of Russian corporations targeted by this program.
As per Anonymous, the Green Atom data provide evidence of the extent to which the Russian government abuses its legal structures, as Convex virtually captured the entire data. Anonymous also noted that they had more unreleased information on FSB’s intelligence-collecting activities.
What is Green Atom Surveillance Program?
In their Twitter post, Anonymous stated that the data was stolen from Convex, which led to the revelation that the company had been running a project named Green Atom involving installing and maintaining surveillance equipment for monitoring Russian citizens and private corporations’ online activities.
Through the Green Atom program, the government could perform wide-ranging surveillance activities, using the equipment from Convex to monitor their incoming and outgoing traffic.
At the time of publishing this article, the data was available on the official website of DDoSecrets.
Anonymous – Russia and Ukraine Conflict
The Ukraine-Russia conflict has reached a new level with Anonymous cyber attacks on Russian networks. Anonymous, the international hacktivist group that works to fight censorship and corruption, has so far claimed responsibility for several cyber and social engineering attacks against the Russian government and the private sector.
Some of the collective’s attacks include hacking the Yandex taxi app (1), Payment processor Qiwi (2), Ministry of Culture (3), State-Run Broadcaster (4), Central Bank of Russia (5), unsecured printers (6), security cameras (7), media censoring agency Roskomnadzor (8), 90% of Russian misconfigured databases (9), TV transmissions (10), Electic vehicle charging station (11) and more.