Anonymous has breached the database of Roskomnadzor, the Russian federal executive agency responsible for monitoring, controlling, and censoring Russian media.
The cyber attack allowed the hactivist group to seize more than 360,000 files, which have now been released to the public.
The 820GB data dump focuses primarily on documents concerning the republic of Bashkortostan, one of the largest provinces in the Russian federation.
According to Anonymous, Roskomnadzor's activities are a matter of public interest 'to the people of Russia and to the world'.
Advert
"Their recent actions have only emphasised this," Anonymous said in a statement.
"Roskomnadzor has given instructions about what can be said and ordered media outlets to delete stories that call Russia's invasion of Ukraine an invasion.
"In response to Facebook's fact-checking Russia's statements about the war, Roskomnadzor began restricting access to Facebook before later blocking it.
"Roskomnadzor also threatened to block access to Russian Wikipedia over their article about the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Advert
"This follows an established history of similar actions in the past."
According to Distributed Email of Secrets, their source from Anonymous felt 'the Russian people should have access to information about their government' after being cut off from independent media and news outlets from the outside world.
"We are publishing this release in anticipation of Russia potentially being cut off from the global internet on March 11, and hope Russians will have time to download this data, before then," the statement issued from Distributed Email of Secrets said.
Some documents in the mass release were dated as recently as March 5.
Advert
Russia has been criticised by Anonymous and other hackers since the Ukrainian invasion, with these groups demanding more transparency about what is happening in Moscow and on the warfront.
Since then the beginning of the invasion, HackRead reports Russian IT infrastructure is being targeted frequently by digital sleuths.
Attacks have been made on government websites, state-run TV channels, and online video streaming platforms.
Researchers have revealed hackers also launched a large-scale cyberattack on misconfigured and exposed cloud databases owned by Russian organisations.
Advert
According to IT security researchers at Website Planet, Anonymous and other associated hacker groups have also broken into around 90 per cent of Russian cloud databases.
Hackers have been removing files stored in these compromised databases or have renamed them with pro-Ukrainian messages such as 'Putin stop this war', 'no war' and 'HackedByUkraine.'
If you would like to donate to the Red Cross Emergency Appeal, which will help provide food, medicines and basic medical supplies, shelter and water to those in Ukraine, click here for more information.
Topics: Russia, Hacks, Technology
Rachel Lang