Anonymous ‘HACK Russia’s central bank’ & threaten to release secret agreements

ANONYMOUS has claimed to have hacked Russia’s central bank while threatening to release thousands of secret agreement documents in the next 48 hours.

The hacking team claimed responsibility for the alleged attack on Twitter Wednesday evening.

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“JUST IN: The #Anonymous collective has hacked the Central Bank of Russia. More than 35.000 files will be released within 48 hours with secret agreements. #OpRussia,” the hackers tweeted but failed to provide more detail about the attack.

The alleged hacking comes as highly regarded central bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina reportedly sought to resign after Vladimir Putin ordered an invasion of Ukraine.

Nabiullina’s request was denied by Putin, who instead asked her to stay put, NDTV reported citing four people with knowledge of the discussions.

Now, Nabiullina is left to manage the fallout from a war that’s quickly undone much of what’s she’s accomplished in the nine years since she took office.

Nabiullina was photographed looking bleak at a Kremlin meeting and posted a cryptic video, where she acknowledged the Russian economy was in an ‘extreme’ situation, saying, “We all very much would have liked this not to have happened.”

In a follow-up tweet, the hackers claimed they’d be “targeting” companies that continue to operate in Russia.

“JUST IN: #Anonymous is targeting companies that continue to operate in Russia,” they added.

The direct message came after Anonymous warned Western companies that continued to operate in Russia should pull out or risk facing cyberattacks.

Since Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, countless global companies, including Apple, Nike, Ikea, Shell, Goldman Sachs, Visa, Mastercard and PayPal, stopped servicing Russian-based customers.

In early March, Anonymous claimed that it had shut down Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos.

The hacking team has said that Russian officials have “no more control over their spy satellites.”

However, the Director-General of Roscosmos, Dmitry Olegovich Rogozin, denied the claim and called the group “petty swindlers.”

In a social media statement, he said: “The information of these scammers and petty swindlers is not true. All our space activity control centers are operating normally.”

Rogozin has previously stated that control of the Russian space industry, orbital group, and the Russian International Space Station segment is protected from cybercriminals.

UKRAINE LATEST

A US defense official told Reuters news agency on Wednesday that Russia’s combat power in Ukraine has declined below 90 percent of its pre-invasion levels for the first time since the war began.

The estimation suggests heavy losses shouldered by Russia.

Estimates put Russian losses at a whopping 15,600 men.

While the United Nations says it has recorded 953 civilian deaths and 1,557 injuries among Ukrainians – but the actual figure is expected to be much higher.