Anonymous hacks & defaces Russian Space Research Institute website

A prominent Twitter account (@YourAnonNews) linked to the Anonymous movement has also confirmed the hack via Twitter Thursday morning.

While the Russian attack on Ukraine continues and the conflict intensifies, we have noticed a sudden surge in hacktivists launching targeted attacks against Russian infrastructure.

Last week Hackread.com published a detailed report on how Anonymous had hacked several Russian State TV Stations and defaced their transmissions with the Ukrainian national anthem. The next day, a group of hacktivists attacked an electric vehicle charging station and interrupted its services in Moscow.

Russian Space Research Institute hack

On Thursday, March 3rd, hacktivists from a group going by the Twitter handle of “v0g3lSec” managed to breach the website of a Russian Space Research Institute.

Hackread.com can confirm that the group defaced the website of Russia’s Space Research Institute (IKI) after breaching one of its subdomains.

Anonymous linked group hacks Russian Space Research Institute website — Deface message left by the group on the Institute’s website

The ISS reference hints at the Russian government’s decision to end the partnership between the Russian space agency and NASA, a move that can adversely impact the future of the International Space Station (ISS).

According to reports, other subdomains of the agency remained online. However, the targeted part of the website is related to the World Space Observatory Ultraviolet project (WSO-UV), which is due to be launched in 2025.

Hackers Leaked IKI Data

A prominent Twitter account (@YourAnonNews) linked to the Anonymous movement has also confirmed the hack via Twitter on Thursday morning.

The YourAnonNews account also shared a link to a ZIP file hosted on the Cloud platform in the subsequent tweets. The group claims it to contain data stolen from the Russian space agency Roscosmos.

The leaked data comprises PDFs, handwritten forms, descriptions of lunar missions, and spreadsheets. However, the authenticity of the data is yet to be confirmed.

For your information, the Space Research Institute of Russia designs and builds scientific equipment/tools for space experiments.