Anonymous Hackers Taking On the Kremlin

In Russia, the data-leaking group Anonymous International struck again releasing an online archive (in Russian) of around 40,000 text messages that the group claims belong to Timur Prokopenko (above) , a highly influential Kremlin official.
This is not the first time that the hacktivist group Anonymous International has targeted Prokopenko, who helped shape the Putin administration’s domestic policy from 2012 to 2014. 
In February of this year, the group published (Russian) roughly 9,500 emails allegedly belonging to Prokopenko. In addition to the SMS messages at the end of March, Anonymous International also leaked yet another trove of messages in early April, this time including correspondence lifted from the messaging app Telegram, and again supposedly from Prokopenko.
Anonymous International emerged at the end of 2013, when it published the full text of Vladimir Putin’s New Year’s national address a few hours before the speech was broadcast on television. Ever since, the group has busied itself with exposing the inner workings of certain political forces in Russia.
Anonymous International is widely known by the name that its “press office” goes by, Shaltai Boltai, which is the name nursery rhyme character Humpty Dumpty goes by in Russian.
The group publishes the leaks on its website, b0ltai.org. However, Russian media watchdog Roskomnadzor ordered access to the site blocked in July 2014, and it is accessible in Russia today only through a virtual private network or a mirror site. The group also tweets from the accounts @b0ltai, which is blocked in Russia, and @b0ltai2, a duplicate account that is still accessible in the country.
In a recent press conference, President Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov downplayed the group’s latest information breach, saying, “I don’t think a lot of people read these publications.”
Judging by the chatter and interest generated online by Anonymous International’s recent leaks, however, it is difficult to agree with Peskov’s assessment.
DefenseOne: http://bit.ly/1IvgNlj