Cyber Anakin

Cyber Anakin is the pseudonym of a computer hacktivist who named himself after Anakin Skywalker, a Star Wars character.[2]

  • Cyber Anakin
  • cyberanakinvader
Born1996 (age 24–25)[1]
Other namescybanakinvader
OccupationGrey hat hacktivist
Websitecyberanakinvader.wordpress.com

History

Early history

On July 17, 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down in Ukrainian airspace amidst the War in Donbass. In 2016, in response to this, Cyber Anakin, who was a teen back then started hacking, targeting Russian websites and databases, including the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, news site and email provider km.ru and gaming company Nival Networks. The information gained during the breaches included dates of birth, encrypted passwords, and geographic locations. In the case of km.ru, secret questions and answers were obtained. There were 1.5 million victims.[3][4][5]

The km.ru and Nival data breaches were confirmed by computer security researcher Troy Hunt. In a subsequent interview with online news outlet VICE Motherboard, Cyber Anakin said that he had done the hacks in retaliation for the Russians causing the MH17 crash.[6][7]

The stolen data were eventually cataloged by a group calling themselves "Distributed Denial of Secrets" among other leaked Russian documents/data, under the "Dark side of the Kremlin" collection.[8] Besides that he performed denial-of-service attacks against several Russian websites in support of Ksenia Sobchak's presidential campaign during the 2018 Russian presidential election.[9]

Activities against North Korea

In 2018, as a response to the assassination of Kim Jong-nam, Cyber Anakin took advantage of an error in a North Korean propaganda website ournation-school.com that erroneously linked to a non-existent Twitter account @juche_school1 instead of its actual official profile @juche_school (without the number 1).[10] As an "April Fools prank" he registered a spoof account under that empty username and posted numerous anti-DPRK propaganda messages including unflattering images and obscene slurs directed against Kim Jong-un.[11][12][13][14] According to North Korea Tech's website directory, the ournation-school.com website is run by Kim Il Sung Open University which teaches Juche philosophy teachings in Korean.[15]

He was also involved in spreading messages via TV set top boxes in opposition against Article 13 of the European Union's Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market. In an interview with ZDNet, he expressed concerns that the proposed filter will "let things which shouldn't to pass through and block those that should be allowed". He also warned that the Internet "will become a boring, gloomy place" if MEP Axel Voss "has his way".[16]

Subsequent activities

In the aftermath of Ukraine International Airlines 752 shoot-down, Cyber Anakin defaced the website of Water and Power Organization of Khuzestan, Iran and placed the names of Flight 752's victims on its webpage. His nationality was hinted but not confirmed to be Iranian.[17]

Since 2019, Cyber Anakin was involved in an effort that was named #FreeHKSaveKorea by employing methods such as printer hacking in order to spread a modified version of a peace plan first proposed in the book "Stop North Korea!: A Radical New Approach to Solving the North Korea Standoff" written by former Inha University professor Shepherd Iverson. In the book he suggested "buying out North Korea" with a $175 billion fund to achieve re-unification of the Korean peninsula. Shortly after that it was further disseminated by the Anonymous hacking collective during their United Nations hack.[17][18][19][20]

During the COVID-19 pandemic, he had participated in the OpenVaccine project of the game with a purpose platform EteRNA that aims to assist the creation of COVID-19 vaccine where he submitted one solution.[21][22]

See also

References
  1. Archived Twitter profile which showed his birth year
  2. "Teen 'Cyber Anakin' hacker wants revenge on Russia after the MH17 crash". news.com.au. March 5, 2016. Retrieved May 29, 2019.
  3. "(Archived) Claim of responsiblity(sic) of some recent Russian database breaches by cyberanakinvader". Reddit. Cyber Anakin. February 1, 2016. Retrieved May 29, 2019.
  4. ""Cyber Anakin" wants MH17 revenge". Perth Now. March 5, 2016. Retrieved May 29, 2019.
  5. Starks, Tim. "The RSA takeaway". POLITICO. Retrieved May 29, 2019.
  6. "A Teen Hacker Is Targeting Russian Sites as Revenge for the MH17 Crash". VICE Motherboard. March 5, 2016. Retrieved May 29, 2019.
  7. "Security News This Week: WhatsApp Is Caught in Its Own Crypto War in Brazil". Wired. March 5, 2016. Retrieved May 29, 2019.
  8. Rötzer, Florian. "Leaks einer US-Gruppe zur "Dark Side of the Kremlin"". Telepolis (in German).
  9. "Хакер Cyber Anakin: попытаюсь сорвать выборы в России". internetua.com (in Ukrainian). Retrieved August 15, 2019.
  10. Williams, Martyn (April 6, 2018). "Mischief with Our Nation website". North Korea Tech - 노스코리아테크. Retrieved August 15, 2019.
  11. "N Korea error promotes fake Twitter account". BBC News. April 12, 2018.
  12. Lotto Persio, Sofia (April 12, 2018). "North Korea has yet to notice one of its propaganda websites links to an anti-Kim Jong Un Twitter account". Newsweek. Retrieved May 29, 2019.
  13. "North Korea Has yet to Notice It Got Cyber-Pranked on April Fools Day". Yahoo! News. Retrieved May 29, 2019.
  14. McCoy, Erin L. Cyberterrorism (First ed.). Cavendish Square. p. 7. ISBN 9781502640413.
  15. "Our Nation School (The North Korean Website List)". North Korea Tech. Retrieved May 29, 2019.
  16. Whittaker, Zack. "A protester is spreading anti-Article 13 messages over exposed internet TVs". ZDNet. Retrieved May 29, 2019.
  17. Batebi, Ahmad. "Interview with an Outraged, Grief Stricken Hacktivist". IranWire. Retrieved February 17, 2020.
  18. Everington, Keoni. "Anonymous adds Taiwan back to WHO". www.taiwannews.com.tw. Taiwan News. Retrieved February 17, 2020.
  19. "Kim Jong-un Removal Will Cost $175 Billion, Claims A New Theory". www.inquisitr.com. Retrieved February 17, 2020.
  20. "Could we pay the North Korean elite to give up power and nukes? | NK News". NK News - North Korea News. April 28, 2017. Retrieved February 17, 2020.
  21. Wayment-Steele, Hannah K.; Kim, Do Soon; Choe, Christian A.; Nicol, John J.; Wellington-Oguri, Roger; Sperberg, R. Andres Parra; Huang, Po-Ssu; Participants, Eterna; Das, Rhiju (August 24, 2020). "Theoretical basis for stabilizing messenger RNA through secondary structure design". bioRxiv. pp. 2020.08.22.262931. doi:10.1101/2020.08.22.262931. Retrieved December 28, 2020.
  22. "Supplementary table of bioRxiv paper "Theoretical basis for stabilizing messenger RNA through secondary structure design"". bioRxiv. Retrieved December 28, 2020.
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