(UnitedHeadlines.com) – Hackers retaliated for the Feb. 16 death of opposition leader Alexey Navalny, 47, by accessing a computer network linked to the Russian prison system.
On the hacked prison contractor’s website, the anti-Kremlin hackers posted a photo from a political rally of Navalny and his wife, Yulia, along with the message, “Long live Alexey Navalny!”
The hackers managed to steal a database with contact and family information of about 800,000 Russian prisoners, including prisoners in the Arctic penal colony where Navalny died.
The data, which includes email addresses and phone numbers of prisoners and their family members, is being shared by hackers, who say they hope some of the contacts help them to figure out “what happened to Navalny.”
According to screenshots and videos posted by the hackers taken from the Russian prison system’s online store, the hackers also changed the prices of some items, such as canned beef, from about $1 to the equivalent of about $0.01. It took several hours for the administrator of the prison’s online store to notice the price changes for several hours and three days for the prison’s IT department to reinstate the prices, according to one of the hackers involved who was interviewed by CNN.
On Feb. 19, the day after the online store was hacked, the owner of the online store, JSC Kaluzhskoe, posted that “prices for food and basic necessities” were being “reflected incorrectly” due to a “technical failure.”
According to one of the hackers involved, the hackers warned the store’s administrators not to remove the pro-Navalny messages from the website. The hacker claimed they destroyed one of the administrators’ computer servers when the administrators refused to leave the messages on the website. The hackers’ claims were confirmed by CNN, which matched prison records with screenshots of prisoner information shared by the hackers.
A group of protesters that include Ukrainians and Russian expatriates claim responsibility for the politically motivated hacking, or “hacktivism,” which has increased across Russia since the war with Ukraine began.
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