A group of hackers claim since Monday January 24 to have encrypted the servers of Belarusian Railway, the Belarusian equivalent of the SNCF. But instead of demanding a ransom in cryptocurrency, the “hackers” are calling for the release of political prisoners and a halt to the transport of Russian troops through Belarus’ rail network.
Individuals, governments, public or private companies, nothing and no one escapes the scourge of “ransomware”, that is to say malicious programs capable of taking control of computers. Web blackmailers use them to make data stored by computer systems inaccessible. Victims usually prefer to pay ransom through an online payment device courtesy of cyber criminals.
But in this case, the group of hackers calling themselves the Cyber Partisans wanted to innovate this time. By claiming responsibility for the cyberattack against the computer servers of the Belarusian national railway company, they demand in exchange for the keys to decrypt the company’s data, the release of 50 political prisoners arrested during the autumn 2020 demonstrations against the government. of Alexander Lukashenko and demand that the government put an end to the rail transport of Russian soldiers to the borders of Ukraine.
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A spokesperson for the group provided more details about the attack in an interview with online media. Bloomberg News. We learn that the Cyber Partisans were formed in September 2020, following the election of Lukashenko. The group includes about 30 people, some of whom focus on what they call the “ethical hacking” of Belarusian government computers.
We have encryption keys, and we are ready to return Belarusian Railroad’s systems to normal mode. Our conditions:
? Release of the 50 political prisoners who are most in need of medical assistance.
?Preventing the presence of Russian troops on the territory of #Belarus. https://t.co/QBf0vtcNbK— Belarusian Cyber-Partisans (@cpartisans) January 24, 2022
Last year, they released a slew of data containing secret police archives, personal details of senior government officials, video footage collected from police drones. They also disclosed several phone call recordings recovered by the wiretapping system that was deployed by the country’s government.
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The blocking of the IT infrastructure of the rail network, seems, apparently, to have been short-lived because after displaying connection problems to travelers who were unable to obtain their electronic ticket, the official website of Belarusian Railway was back to normal on Tuesday 25 January.
On the other hand, nothing indicates whether rail traffic is again fully operational after this attack. The cyber war between Russia and Ukraine is therefore in full swing. Some cybersecurity experts also fear that an epidemic of politically motivated ransomware could contaminate critical infrastructure in Europe or the United States, or even around the world.