Hacker collective Anonymous leaks 3 million emails related to Russian entities

International hacktivist collective Anonymous said it has published millions of emails it acquired from Russian organisations through a series of cyberattacks in retaliation for the Russian invasion of Ukraine. 

“Since declaring cyberwar on the Kremlin's criminal regime, Anonymous has released over 3 million Russian emails via DDoSecrets. Over 2.25 million of them are from the Russian government,” the decentralised hacker collective said in a Twitter post through its affiliate Anonymous TV account.  

The collective added that this is just the beginning and will release other data related to Russian entities in the coming days. 

The hacker collective has been leaking these datasets at frequent intervals since February. The latest leak from early this week includes 200,000 emails belonging to Russia’s Ministry of Culture. The leaked emails show that censorship is one of the key activities of the ministry. The collective also leaked 57,000 emails related to the Russian Orthodox Church for supporting the Russian attack on Ukraine. 

Unlike most hacker groups that target organisations for monetary gains or to cripple critical services, the Anonymous collective usually targets governments, corporates, and religious institutions to expose them before the public by leaking their secret conversations and activities on online forums.

Hacker groups have been actively involved on both sides since the build-up to the Russia-Ukraine war. Weeks before Russia declared war, state-backed hacker groups from Russia had launched a series of cyberattacks on Ukraine and several other countries in Europe. In Ukraine, they went after critical infrastructure providers including banks, satellite communication as well as websites of the ministry of foreign affairs and the ministry of education.  

In retaliation, ethical hackers and groups like Anonymous launched cyberattacks on Russian entities including government agencies, companies, and state-backed companies such as Russia Today. Several cybersecurity companies such as Bitdefender also came forward and offered their threat intelligence tools to Ukraine to defend against Russian cyberattacks.