Unknown persons again tried to hack the telegram accounts of Kushtau defenders

Unknown people again tried to hack the telegram accounts of the defenders of the Kushtau Shikhan. This was reported by Ural. MBH Media".

“They tried to hack me and several other activists. But I have two-step authentication, so they didn’t succeed. I assume that someone wants to find out who is the administrator of the Kushtau-Online telegram channel, which promptly covered the protests near Shikhan. Although I have nothing to do with him, I don’t even know who is leading him,” said Ural. MBH Media” member of the coordinating council for the protection of Kushtau Robert Davletshin.

On August 22, the telegram accounts of Shihan defenders were already under attack. The attackers, using duplicate SIM cards, intercepted SMS messages with an access code to the application. This could be done with the help of employees of mobile operators.

• Shikhan Kushtau is a small mountain in the Ishimbay region of Bashkortostan. Local activists have been fighting for several months against deforestation for the development of soda and limestone deposits in the territory of Kushtau. Starting in August, work in the protected natural area resumed . Activists advocate the preservation of natural monuments, the remaining shikhans of Toratau, Kushtau, Yuraktau. The previously existing shihan of Shakhtau was completely destroyed to obtain raw materials by the Bashkir Soda Company. On August 14, the police detained more than 70 defenders of Kushtau, many of them were later arrested under administrative charges. The head of Bashkortostan, Radiy Khabirov, threatened the protesters with criminal charges, but later promised that the Shikhan would be given the status of a specially protected area.
• Attempts to gain unauthorized access to telegram accounts of activists have been going on for a long time. In April 2016, the director of the NGO “Image of the Future” Oleg Kozlovsky reported on social networks that his account in the Telegram messenger was hacked. A PEN report from 2012 to 2018 reported attempts to “intercept SMS messages containing authorization codes for the Telegram accounts of several activists” in February and April 2016.
• In July 2019, co-chairman of the Golos movement and confidant of Moscow City Duma candidate Ilya Yashin, Andrei Buzin, reported that his Facebook and Telegram accounts had been hacked.
• In 2019, repeated attempts were made to hack the telegram accounts of journalists covering protests against the construction of a temple in one of the parks in Yekaterinburg.