14 DAY TRIAL // On Sunday, the website of Russia Today (RT.com) was hacked and defaced. So far, no one appears to have taken credit for the attack.
The attackers breached the site’s administrator panel and placed the word “Nazi” in every headline related to the conflict in Ukraine. More precisely, the hackers replaced words like “Russian” and “military” with “Nazi.”
Here are a few examples of headlines on the defaced website:
“Russian senators vote to use stabilizing Nazi forces on Ukrainian territory”
“Putin: Nazi citizens, troops threatened in Ukraine, need armed forces’ protection”
“Thousands rally against ‘illegitimate govt’, raise Nazi flags in eastern Ukraine”
It took RT around 30 minutes to restore the website. At the time of writing, the site appears to be working properly.
Hackers deface http://t.co/JMJB1jiQHv website, crack admin access, place "Nazi" in every headline. Back to normal now.
— RT (@RT_com) March 2, 2014
It’s uncertain if the attacks are related, but last week, some unknown hackers launched distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks against a number of Ukrainian websites, including ones that support the Euromaidan protests, the one of the parliament (Verkhovna Rada), and the site of the Right Sector, a militant group with borderline fascist or neofascist views.
One day later, Anonymous Ukraine defaced several Polish websites to warn the people of Poland that their country could suffer the same fate as Ukraine.
“Ukraine has suffered a coup and Nazis came to power. Yes, Nazis came to power in a European country in the 21 century! Europe has suffered Nazi terror in the past. Now it may happen again. We want to warn people of Poland that their country is in great danger,” the hackers stated.