Hackers from SocialHack claimed responsibility for hacking the Russian-language website Russia Today

Hackers from the previously unknown SocialHack group announced they had hacked the Russian-language website of the Russia Today TV channel. They reported this on their website and on their microblog.

As Russia Today editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan and TV channel correspondent Irina Galushko reported, hackers managed to edit some texts posted on the Russian-language website. Initially, Simonyan published an incorrect link to her website, which is why a number of media outlets managed to interpret the stub site on the rt.russian.com domain as a hack.

Hackers tried to change the content of already written articles. We are investigating from which IP addresses they tried to take over the site

— Margarita Simonyan (@M_Simonyan) May 12, 2015

Judging by the screenshots provided by media employees, on May 12 at 16:28 an advertising message appeared on the website (it was deleted, the cache is available on Google) instead of news about Dmitry Peskov’s statements on the Minsk agreements.

The recording said that SocialHack was conducting selection for hacker courses, where they taught social engineering, cryptography, virology, web hacking and information security. Representatives of the group did not disclose the cost of the courses, but the training itself was planned to be conducted not online, but through XMPP/Jabber text chats.

Hello, Russian Today! We placed an advertisement on your website that contributed to an increase in interest in social engineering. Thank you! #RT

— SocialHack (@SocialHack_ru) May 12, 2015

It is unknown how the hackers managed to gain access to edit the content of the Russia Today website. After the hack, an announcement of a future analysis of the attack appeared on the SocialHack website .

In August 2014, LifeNews TV channel complained about a similar attack. Then, supposedly unknown hackers edited some of the articles on the publication’s website: for example, they replaced the word “vandal” with the word “patriot” in the news about a repainted star on a Stalinist high-rise building in Moscow.

#News #Margarita_Simonyan #hackers #hacking #Russia_Today #Irina_Galushko #SocialHack