RIA Novosti: Russian experts speculate on why prime minister’s Twitter account was hacked

(RIA Novosti – August 14, 2014) Moscow, 14 August: Russian Prime Minister Dmitriy Medvedev’s Twitter account [https://twitter.com/MedvedevRussia], which was hacked on Thursday [14 August], may have been hacked in response to the law that imposes stricter liability on bloggers and the partial ban on anonymous access to the Internet via [public] wi-fi networks, or because of the strained relations between Russia and the West, experts polled by RIA Novosti think.

Unidentified assailants hacked the prime minister’s account and posted some comments on his behalf, including a letter of resignation. The tweet explained that the prime minister was resigning because he was allegedly ashamed of the actions of the cabinet of ministers.

“In Russia, it is not difficult at all to hack a public figure’s Twitter or other social network account because there is still no understanding of the value of information and reputational damage in Russia,” an analyst of the InfoWatch company, Sergey Khayruk, thinks.

According to him, most likely the hack was carried out through the simplest brute-force method, that is to say simple guessing of passwords, all the more so that most of the prime minister’s personal information, including the names of his parents, the date of birth and the names of loved ones are in the public domain. “The solution to this problem is to use specialized solutions, which were apparently not used this time,” Khayruk told RIA Novosti.

Hackers think that it was not too difficult to hack the prime minister’s microblog. “The hack may have been carried out by a small independent hacker group, and its location could not be determined. The attack itself is nothing complicated, the accounts of the most notorious figures in the blogosphere on LiveJournal and other social networks have been hacked in the same way before,” a representative of a well-known hacker group in Russia said. It is possible that this was done in connection with the controversial amendments to the law on bloggers or the requirement to present identification when accessing public wi-fi networks, he added.

External threat

The Russian prime minister’s microblog may have been hacked in view of the political and economic confrontation between Russia and a number of Western countries, Dmitriy Abzalov, the head of the Centre for Strategic Communications, thinks. “With high probability, the process of hacking itself may have been done through Eastern Europe,” the expert noted.

“The information component is very important. For example, a decision of the Israeli Defence Minister, which he may announce on social networks, will be very significant. In today’s world, access to the information circuit at the decision-making level is especially important. If you look closely, any confrontation is connected with interceptions of information channels, which also include Twitter,” Abzalov told RIA Novosti.

Currently a number of Russian officials are present on Twitter and Facebook and sometimes express personal views on developments in the country. The websites of agencies and officials in social networks are periodically subjected to hacking attacks. For example, the Twitter account of the abolished Health and Social Development Ministry was hacked a few days ago and dating ads were posted on it.

[Medvedev’s Twitter account was hacked because there is no established system of communications between the intelligence agencies of the world, Matvey Alekseyev, director of external communications at the Afisha-Rambler-SUP media group (which owns the Russian sector of LiveJournal), said on Gazprom-owned, editorially independent Russian radio station Ekho Moskvy on the same day. “If dialogue is established between the intelligence agencies, such situations will not happen, there will be an instantaneous response to any such situation,” Alekseyev said.]