As part of the cyberwar it is waging against Russia, the Anonymous collective has decided to attack three large French companies that continue their operations in the country.
Anonymous hacktivists claimed on Twitter an attack carried out against the Russian domains of three large French companies which refuse to close their points of sale in Russia as a sign of opposition to the war in Ukraine. This is how auchan.ru, leroymerlin.ru and decathlon.ru were neutralized at the end of last week. “Anonymous targets and will continue to target all companies that continue to operate on Russian soil”indicates the group, which considers these companies as “supporters” of the Kremlin.
The management of these three major French groups have repeatedly explained the reasons why they do not wish to close their doors in Russia, referring to the consequences on employment and considering that it would not be appropriate to penalize populations who do not support not necessarily Vladimir Putin’s military decisions. In his address to the French Parliament, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky asked French companies to cease their activities in Russia. He then cited big names such as Renault, but also Auchan and Leroy Merlin. He even went so far as to call them “sponsors of the Russian war machine”. Renault has since shut down its Moscow plant and is considering its stake in AvtoVAZ, its Russian subsidiary.
Anonymous at war with Russia
Shortly after the outbreak of the Russian offensive in Ukraine, Anonymous had warned that actions of this type (including DDOS attacks) would be carried out. The collective was officially “went to war against Russia” February 24. Since then, thousands of websites hosted by the Russian or Belarusian government have been targeted, as well as the computer systems of shopping centres, banks or airports.
One of the actions of which Anonymous is most proud to date is the hacking of the Central Bank of Russia, on whose servers the hackers were able to recover tens of thousands of documents, some of which are classified. Other notable actions: the attack on Rosatom, the national agency in charge of nuclear energy, or the hacking of major Russian television channels. Even the Kremlin site was symbolically taken offline for several hours at the end of February.