Anonymous steals 20TB data from Russian oil giant Rosneft
Cyber actors claiming to represent the Anonymous hacker collective say they have breached Rosneft Deutschland - the German subsidiary of Russian energy company Rosneft - and stolen 20 terabytes of data from its systems.
Local newspaper Die Welt reported the hack on Sunday, citing Germany's Federal Office for Information Security (BSI).
The paper said the BSI had offered assistance in resolving the situation, which happened late Friday night or early Saturday morning.
Rosneft Deutschland took its systems offline and informed BSI after identifying the attack.
The firm's pipelines and refineries are still running as usual, and authorities have launched an inquiry into the incident.
Rosneft is the third-largest player in the German oil refining sector, with political links to the country's ruling class. Rosneft Deutschland claims to be responsible for around a quarter of all crude oil imports into Germany in recent years.
The former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who has come under fire for his close links to Russian firms since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, is the chairman of Rosneft's board.
Igor Sechin, Rosneft's CEO, is a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin and one of the Russian billionaires who has been sanctioned by Western governments in recent weeks. Officials in France seized a $120 million yacht belonging to Sechin on the 3rd March.
Anonymous Germany (via Anonleaks) says it attacked Rosneft because of the company's significant lobbying efforts against sanctions for Russia over the country's invasions of Ukraine.
Anonleaks saus, 'Anonymous hacktivists have succeeded in gaining access to Rosneft Germany's servers and tapping large amounts of data. In the process, they penetrated very deeply into Rosneft Deutschland's systems. So deep, in fact, that they easily found backups of employees' and executives' laptops.'
The hackers allegedly gained administrative access to some of Rosneft's German unit services; a variety of corporate documents and other information; and hard disk images of employee devices and the mail server.
The hackers said they have no intention of publishing the data.
'The Anons will now take a good night's sleep, then sift through the data - and think about what to do with it. What is already certain is that this data will not be leaked publicly. Because the effect of a public leak would be less than the profit that competitors could make from it.'
Since the start of the Ukraine crisis, Anonymous has claimed responsibility for cyberattacks against a number of Russian organisations.
The group has declared its support for Western allies, stating that it would solely attack Russian operations.
Earlier this month, the group hacked into Russian state TV and streaming services, including Russia 24, Channel One, Moscow 24, Wink and Ivi, to show footage from the conflict in Ukraine to ordinary Russians. Russian media has come under tight state control since the invasion and the average Russian citizen is unaware of the realities of the situation.
Last month, hackers breached websites belonging to Russian media networks Izvestia, Kommersant, RBC Fontaka and TASS to show pro-Ukraine messages.
Anonymous also claimed responsibility for hacks last month that saw several Russian government websites, including the official Kremlin site, becoming inaccessible.
The government's website (government.ru), the State Duma's (Russia's lower house of parliament) website, and the Ministry of Defence's website were all affected just hours after Russian troops invaded Ukraine.