A group of anti-Putin hackers have hit Russian prison data networks in retaliation for the death in prison of opposition leader Alexey Navalny. They also left a message for the Kremlin leader
They placed photos of Navalny on the hacked prison contractor’s website, according to interviews with the hackers and records reviewed by CNN.
“Long live Alexey Navalny!” read a message on the hacked website, accompanied by a photo of Navalny and his wife Yulia at a political rally.
In a stunning security breach, they also appear to have stolen a database containing information on hundreds of thousands of Russian prisoners, their relatives and contacts, including records held on prisoners at the Arctic penal colony, where Navalny died on February 16.
The hackers, who say they are a mix of nationalities, including Russian and Ukrainian immigrants, are sharing that data, including phone numbers and e-mail addresses of prisoners and their relatives “in the hope that someone can ‘contact them and help understand what happened to Navalny.
Hackers used their access to the Russian prison system’s online commissariat, where family members buy food for inmates, to change the prices of things like noodles and corned beef to one ruble, which is roughly $0.01, according to footage from the online store posted by the hackers. Normally, these goods cost over $1.
It took several hours for the administrator of the prison’s online store to notice that the Russians were buying food quite cheaply, according to the hacker. It would be three days before IT staff at the prison store were able to completely shut down the discounts offered by the hackers, according to the hacker’s account.
The hacker group sent notes to administrators of the online prison store, warning them not to remove pro-Navalny messages from the website.
When Internet administrators refused, the hackers retaliated by destroying one of the administrators’ computer servers, the hacker claimed.
