Hackers who caused Microsoft outage have Russian links: Report

The hackers behind the recent attack on Microsoft are suspected to have Russian links, reported The Guardian, citing experts. The news report said that it is unlikely that the hackers are an Islamic group with links in Sudan as it is being claimed by them. The hacking attacks that took place in early June caused outages of some of Microsoft's services.

Anonymous Sudan, a group of hackers, has claimed responsibility for denial-of-service attacks on Australian companies. The companies include those from the aviation, healthcare and education sectors. The name of the group suggests that it is from Sudan. The group claimed that it was targetting Australian companies because of clothes worn at the Melbourne fashion festival with the words 'God walks with me' in Arabic.

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The Guardian reported that cybersecurity firm CyberCX released a report on Monday that said that Anonymous Sudan is unlikely to be an authentic hacktivist organisation. The firm said that it is likely that it has links with the Russian state.

Means used an indication of origin

The firm said that the organisation used paid infrastructure in the attack. The operation to direct huge amounts of traffic to a service would need tens of thousands of dollars and hence it was unlikely that Anonymous Sudan was a loose collective.

CyberCX said that Anonymous Sudan was part of the pro-Russia hacker group Killnet.

Alastair MacGibbon, CyberCX’s chief strategy officer, told Guardian Australia that Anonymous Sudan's operations may be aimed at driving "division in society" and disrupting the West.

“It really stems from the Russian government's proclivities to drive division in society,” he said as quoted by The Guardian.

“They don’t really care about the issue … anti-racism, pro-environment or whatever – [they] just get into whatever it is that matters to [harm] targets. In this case, the West.”

MacGibbon said that there have been more and more instances of Russia-linked entities have been carrying out attacks against Australia in the recent past.

“There has to be a link to other forms of monetisation, potentially a state or some form of direction coming from the state that says ‘go and cause fear, uncertainty and doubt’,” he said.

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