Hacker group Anonymous and its cyberwar against Russia

The backstory:

• Anonymous is a decentralized international activist and hacktivist collective.

• It’s hacked governments and their agencies in the past, such as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Islamic State and the Church of Scientology.

• It’s known for advocating on a wide range of issues and doesn’t have a hierarchy or leadership.

The development:

• On Thursday, Anonymous tweeted from an account linked to the group called @YourAnonOne that it had Russia in its sights.

• Since then, the group has claimed credit for several cyber incidents. One primary incident they’ve claimed is a Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack, which is when you flood a site with traffic so much that it goes down.

• On top of that, the group has said that they’ve brought down government sites and state-backed media outlets like Russia Today.

• Over the weekend, Anonymous said it had hacked the Russian Ministry of Defence database. On Sunday, the group reportedly hacked Russian state TV channels and posted pro-Ukraine content.

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