Cyber Anakin

On July 17, 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down in Ukrainian airspace amidst the War in Donbass. At the time Cyber Anakin was a student "doing his math homework" when he first heard about the crash on Interfax; in an interview he stated that before the incident he had simply want to be more like Canadian singer Justin Bieber so that he won't have to do school homework, although what he had actually became is "a much less harmless story". Initially after the crash he hoped that the plane would at least land safely as happened with Korean Air Lines Flight 902 and was even ready to forgive those responsible for the fall of the plane, if it turned out to be the result of human error. However the Russian representatives began to deflect the blame from their own regarding the crash, causing Cyber Anakin to take revenge against Russia instead. For another two years after the fall of MH17, Cyber Anakin could not do anything because he "lacked knowledge". Furthermore, an emotional breaking point occurred in 2015, during the vote of draft United Nations resolution S/2015/562 that called for the creation of an international tribunal to investigate the crash which was vetoed by then Permanent Representative of Russia to the United Nations Vitaly Churkin.[3][4][5][6]

In 2016, in order to retaliate against Russia and after learning hacking methods, 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.[7][8][9]

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.[10][11]

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.[12] Besides that he performed denial-of-service attacks against several Russian websites such as those belonging to Information Satellite Systems Reshetnev, Moscow Metro, and Kaliningrad Regional Duma, in support of Ksenia Sobchak's presidential campaign during the 2018 Russian presidential election.[13]

Eventually Latvia-based independent news website Meduza used the content of KM.RU's data breach to pinpoint the identity of a person who has been harassing female chess players of various countries such as Russia, Kazakhstan and India with the delivery of mails containing used condoms, as IM Andrejs Strebkovs.[3]

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).[14] 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.[15][16][17][18] 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.[19]

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".[20]

In the aftermath of the Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 shoot-down, Cyber Anakin defaced the website of the 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.[21]

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.[22] 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.[21][23][24][25]

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Cyber Anakin 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.[26][27]

In 2022 according to Taiwan News, he had contracted COVID-19 and under five days long "Operation Wrath of Anakin: No Time to Die", hacked Chinese computer systems which included government websites, agricultural management systems, coal mine safety interfaces, nuclear power plant interfaces, and satellite interfaces, as acts of retaliation.[28]

After the Russian invasion of Ukraine had occurred, acting on behalf of decentralized hacking collective Anonymous he defaced five Russian websites, specifically the Russian heavy metal band Aria's site, a Russian hockey site, a Panerai watch enthusiasts site, a basketball team site, and an educational organization site, on Cosmonautics Day which commemorates cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin's Vostok 1 mission to space. Materials posted on the hacked sites included pop up messages such as "Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the defenders" and "I find the orcs lack of morality disturbing", videos featuring Darth Vader and the Star Wars song "The Imperial March," the online game Roblox, disco song "Kung Fu Fighting", Mandopop music video "Fragile", a performance of Ukraine's national anthem by cellist Yo-Yo Ma, and memes showing characters wearing a Guy Fawkes mask and the acronym "A.S.S." which stands for "Anonymous Strategic Support". Besides that, the hacktivist includes a list of "post-war settlement solutions" proposed by Anonymous; examples included financial compensation for the victims of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, the establishment of a United Nations interim administration in occupied territories of Ukraine, a referendum on the status of such territories, creation of a neutral security belt in the region, and monetary reparations of at least US$70 billion to Ukraine for reconstruction, among many other demands.[28]