TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Decentralized international hacktivist group Anonymous this week hacked into a Russian law-enforcement support foundation and uploaded a memorial to the Taiwanese soldier who died while fighting for Ukraine and hacked into the control systems for machinery such as a blast furnace.
To mark Cosmonautics Day, which falls on April 12, an Anonymous representative who goes by the Reddit handle "HaileeSteinfeldFan" on Tuesday (April 11) informed Taiwan News that the collective had hacked into a Russian website that solicits donations for law enforcement organizations on Monday (April 10). The hack of the website of the Perm Regional Fund for Assistance to Law Enforcement Bodies "Prikamye," which is based in the Russian city of Perm, included one long defacement page.
At the time of publication, the defaced page was still accessible online. However, in anticipation of the eventual removal of the vandalized page, Anonymous has created an archived version of the defacement.
NAFO meme. (Anonymous image)
The defacement starts out with the Anonymous logo, a photo of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a video of the New York Philharmonic playing the Ukrainian National Anthem, and a meme promoting the North Atlantic Fellas Organization (NAFO), an internet meme movement founded to counter Russian propaganda amid the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. This was followed by a YouTube video of the Ukrainian rap group Kalush Orchestra performing "Stefania" at the Eurovision Song Contest in 2022.
The collective then wrote the words "Rest in Power Tseng Sheng-Kuang!" (曾聖光), the late Taiwanese soldier who had been serving with a Ukrainian volunteer battalion when he was wounded and died from blood loss when his unit came under fire during a battle with the Russian army in Luhansk Oblast last fall. Tseng, a Taiwan Army veteran from Ji'an Township in Hualien County and a member of the Amis tribe, went to Ukraine in June last year and a memorial service was held in Lviv, Ukraine, on Nov. 14, photos of which the collective embedded in the page.
Tseng while serving in Ukraine. (Facebook, jayjonathan.tseng photo)
The hacktivists also claimed that they have "repeatedly made great strides against Russia ever since the latter started its immoral war against Ukraine." They then posted screenshots of hacked Russian supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) software applications used for controlling industrial processes, including what appears to be the SCADA for a blast furnace.
Apparent interface for a Russian blast furnace. (Anonymous image)
Anonymous then reiterated its claim that because Russian Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin had ejected from his capsule before it landed, he does not qualify as the first man in space. It then argued that the "firsts" achieved by the Soviet Union during the space race were exaggerated and were far surpassed by U.S. accomplishments.
The decentralized collective mocked Russia's transition to imitations of major brands such as McDonald's, Instagram, and YouTube following international sanctions in response to its invasion of Ukraine. They also accused the Russian government of imitating the Nazi swastika with its "Z" pro-war propaganda motif.
