Following the murder of Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny, anti-Kremlin militants seized a database comprising hundreds of thousands of Russian prisoners and hacked into a government-run online marketplace, according to a report.
Navalny was the most prominent Russian opposition figure and a strong critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin. He died on February 16 at a penal colony in Russia's Arctic region while serving his jail sentence.
CNN reported that an international group of 'hactivists', comprising Russian expats and Ukrainians, stole prison documents and hacked into the marketplace by acquiring access to a computer linked to the Russian prison system.
Following Navalny's death in February, overseas 'hactivists' allegedly acquired a Russian database containing hundreds of thousands of convicts, relatives, and contacts.
As per the report, the hackers also targeted the jail system's online marketplace, where relatives of inmates purchase meals for their family members. The rate of products like noodles and canned meat was changed by the hackers from nearly $1 to $.01 once they gained access to the marketplace.
It took many hours for the administrators of the prison system to realise that something was wrong, and it took an additional three days to undo the hacker's work completely.
The hackers also posted a photo of Navalny and his wife, Yulia Navalnaya, on the jail contractor's website, along with the statement "Long live Alexey Navalny".
While the hackers claimed the database included information on approximately 800,000 prisoners, the report said there were some duplicate entries, but the data spilt by the hackers "still contains details on hundreds of thousands of inmates".
What is 'hacktivism' and why did hackers siphon Russian databases?
The terms "hacking" and "activism" are combined to form the phrase "hacktivism." It alludes to hacking operations in which hackers participate in activism for a specific cause.
According to Clare Stouffer of the cybersecurity company Norton, hacktivism is a lot like activism in the real world, when activists create disruption to push for the change they want.
"With hacktivism, the disruption is fully online and typically carried out anonymously. "While not all hacktivists have malicious intent, their attacks can have real-world consequences," Stouffer wrote in a Norton blog.